[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] karatekid430:
I dislike DisplayLink greatly - mainly because of drivers and CPU overhead. They will be obsoleted by Thunderbolt 3 if Intel opens it up - because that will allow a tiny embedded Radeon to be attached, to add displays - or just use the video ability of the actual port.

That said, if there are Linux drivers for DisplayLink, adding them into the device kernel should allow it to identify the device as a display. Samsung only enable certain drivers by default that they wish to use (for example, wired Ethernet used to be not supported).

---------- Post added at 02:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 AM ----------

If you want a portable solution, look at Asus MB16AC - but what annoys me is that it does not have aux power - so it will drain power from the Galaxy, and the only way to charge it is through wireless charging. Asus say that there is no solution for external power. I might eventually decide to get one and try the alternate mode adapters backwards. It is unlikely to work, but not impossible like the HDMI ones that convert the signal. If we found an adapter where the DisplayPort lanes are hardwired straight to the USB-C port, then there is a small chance it could work backwards. I show a working but impractical solution with the Sunix UPD2018 going from DisplayPort -> USB-C alt-mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe94fhLIaw

Does anybody know about a USB-C to USB-C (data) and USB-C (power delivery)? I cannot believe that none has ever been made. Ideally, I want a Thunderbolt 3 version. I have the Aorus Gaming Box (sold Nvidia GTX 1070, inserted AMD R9 Nano) and it is perfect, except no daisy chaining. It can supply 100W (PD 3.0) which makes it future proof.

My goal is to find an eGPU that has daisy chaining, and 100W power delivery - and then after that, I can buy devices without power delivery and chain them on - a true one cable docking solution. But Intel disallows daisy chaining on eGPUs - but I do not know why they cannot just make it an external PCIe enclosure for non-graphics, that just happens to have a large PSU inside.

At it happens, my Dell 9365 says external GPU support: No. Hence my eGPU must not be identifying as an eGPU - otherwise it would not work.

The best shot at a solution I have is that I have bought a heap of USB-C breakout boards from eBay - when I get time, I will connect them such that two are connected together with data - all pins except CC, VCC, GND. But the complications arise from the fact that one of the CC lines are used for cable orientation, and also the fact that the 100W cables have an eMarker chip and might not work in such a configuration. So it might require that I carefully take one of the CC lines only, and make sure the cable orientation is only one way around. This is risky, as I do not have any USB-C devices that I wish to fry.

This stuff could easily be tackled by a company that has experience with electronic engineering - just need a chip that renegotiates / re-enumerates the power delivery communication, and takes care of the eMarkers, etc. I cannot believe there is not a demand for this. There are heaps of USB-C hubs that pass through power, but none that preserve USB-C alt mode (split only the power and preserve the same USB-C functionality).

The other solution is to splice open an eMarker cable and hack in another port - that way cable orientation would not be an issue. But I don't especially like destroying things without a fairly good confidence that something good will come of it.

A powered Thunderbolt 3 dock would do this (although the best are only 85W) and will not be transparent (another device in the chain) and also add useless ports and be expensive. It would not work for USB-C, either. So it needs to be passive (protocol-independent), ideally.

Anyway, such a thing would solve using a USB-C monitor with only one port. And solve my Thunderbolt issue, allowing me to inline power delivery into the first Thunderbolt 3 cable in my chain.

I hope I get people thinking - if the right person sees this, perhaps an experienced company could come up with this easily.

---------- Post added at 02:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:38 AM ----------

Here's another topic for discussion: Apple removed the audio jack on their newer iPhones - much to people's annoyance. But would you voluntarily sacrifice the audio jack on Samsung for a second fully functioning USB-C port? I know for me, the answer is definitely yes.