Your move, Monster Cable.If it was a HDMI connected camcorder then it might be able to record from the Mac, but the Mac cannot record from the HDMI port. But, now you can at least sleep better at night knowing that there’s little chips inside your cable making it go fast. One note: Gennum’s site mentions that their transceiver technology enables “reliable data transfer at cutting-edge speeds over low cost, thin-gauge copper cables.” Perhaps they were thinking of some other low cost cables, as we don’t think Apple’s $50 creation can be considered cheap. All in all, Apple’s $50 cable contained a total of 12 larger, inscribed chips, and tons of smaller electronic components. We assumed that the other connector side would be identical, and we were correct. Of course, there were tons of little resistors (providing impedance as needed) all around the larger chips. They were flanked by other, much smaller chips that surely added to the cable’s cost: two chips labeled S6A 1JG on one side, and chips labeled 1102F SS8370 and 131 3S on the other. We found two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector, one on each side. Peeling back the metal (which appears to be plated brass) revealed the hardware underneath. Once the casing was gone, we had to perform a significant amount of desoldering and cutting in order remove the metal surrounding the connector.
Heating up an Exacto knife worked well against the hard plastic, and we managed to remove the casing from the connector after some careful cutting/melting. The cable contained a sturdy plastic sleeve on each end that looked quite suspicious. A short while later, the cable was in our hands and ready to go under the knife.Īnd we knew exactly where to look. There was only one way to find out for sure we hopped on over to the local Apple Store and donated $50 to the build-Apple-a-new-campus fund. He postulated that the cable may actually have chips containing firmware in it, making it more expensive to produce than your garden-variety HDMI cable-thus justifying the hefty price tag. We received good word from one of our friends, Ars Technica’s own Chris Foresman, that the $50 Thunderbolt cable may be an active cable. And we’re not talking about the Lay’s variety.
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