Thunderbolt gone bad? or UA M&CP app?

[metropical]

has this ever happened to anyone?

have an OEM Apple TB2 cable plugged into an OEM Apple MMEL2AM/A Thunderbolt 3 USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter to '18 mini.
The adapter is 2.5 years old. The OEM Apple Tbolt 2 is 11 years old, bought the same time as the Apollo 8 silver.
When I updated my '18 mini a some months back to Monty, everything ran fine.

A few months later when I updated to 12.7.1, the Apollo started, intermittently, not mounting without encouragement.
A little at first, then more as time went on. Cable reseat, restart, hard reset, etc.

After 12.7.2 I had an issue that was affecting other apps in that they wouldn't launch.
After some messing about, I decided to nuke and pave 12.7.2 and everything else.
At that time UA was at ~10.2.5.
Things were stable for a while. Then little by little the need for encouragement for the Apollo became. daily happening.

Today, just wouldn't light. I pulled the Apollo and reseated the Tbolt card.

I followed UA method to uninstall reinstall.
Still not happening. Played with cables and adapter and it finally awoke. Kind of thinking I have a cable or an adapter issue rather than the A8.
Once I'm connected, cable tugging or whatever doesn't disturb things. Normally, I have been leaving the A8 powered 24/7.

Anyone ever had a Tbolt2 cable or adapter fail? Just seems so odd for stationary set up.

 

[wglotz]

One of the failure modes of equipment that has connectors, internal (or external) is oxidation, over time the pins on the connectors can oxidize and create a bad connection. So one of the first troubleshooting steps is to unplug and replug all connectors in the equipment. If this fixes the issue then use some Deoxit D5 contact cleaner. Spray the connector pins and plug/unplug the connector several times to break the oxide layer.

 

[metropical]

guess since so far cabling seems to be intermittent, I should give DeOxit a shot. Couldn't hurt.

 

[wglotz]

I would. A can of compressed air is helpful also to blow out the female receptacles.

 

[metropical]

as it turns out, the issue seems to be UA Meter & CP v11.0.1 12-05-2023 b171275. YMMD.
I used Terminal to force stop UA M&CP every night before the Mac shutdown. That has prevented the app from trying to update Firmware which it doesn't appear to need. And since then, UA M&CP is no longer looking for the I/O on start up. Been a week, knock silicon.
For the time being, don't think I'll update to 11.1 as things are working.