Regular HD & mSATA SSD experiment (probably aborted...)

[flyingfishfinger]

Alright, time to dredge this one out of the depths!



I've successfully been running with my mSATA SSD in the PC-Card slot since I last posted. It's an irreversible modification, since I basically destroyed the SATA port in the hard drive bay, but it works great! Been using it this way ever since.

However, I've been too scared to do anything else with it since until about a month ago this was my only machine and I didn't have a great workbench last time I played with this. I now have a work-issued Mac that I can use to do real work, so the experiment is back on. I'll also soon have access to a nice new workbench to continue hacking.

One of the old questions still stands, how would one chainload an OS off of anything I connect to the mSATA /mPCIe port? If anyone can enlighten me, I'd be happy to try it out.

Hacks are on!

R

[csioucs]

How are things? I understand that if not the shorting, you could theoretically still have a regular HDD and another one in the PCMCIA space. I'm also willing to sacrifice the PCMCIA space. However, I'm not sure I understand how/from where you powered your drive.

[p.art]

Hi guys,

I'm afraid that the reason to all custom hacks to Mini PCI Express on X61/T61 might be caused by the BIOS itself and how it handles/addresses communication with devices. I mean all the addressing in memory stuff. There are similar issues when using a PCI-E VGA in ThinkPad Advanced Dock. When you use more than 2 or 3 GB of RAM (don't remember now), no boot is possible and external VGA is not recognized when hot docked. This looks to me like a conflict in BIOS address space. Not sure if I'm right but hope we'll find a solution someday.

Anyway it's a very interesting topic.

[flyingfishfinger]

Happy New Year everyone! Times are hard, job searching again. The startup I was with in the fall changed directions, so I'm no longer there.

Anyways, thoughts have turned back to the project. I mentioned before that with the MiniPCIe SATA card, the computer fails to boot. The solution would have been to add an external power switch and turn it on post-boot, but that'd be quite a hack and definitely not make the card bootable.

I think I've found a different, more elegant way of doing it though, but I need some help with information. I found that Silicon Image makes a SATA splitter:
https://www.semiconductorstore.com/pdf/ ... 723_PB.pdf

We can design a replacement PCB using that part which sits on the SATA port and serves both a regular hard drive and the mSATA card. However, I need information on the hard disk sub-card (http://i00.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/4762 ... inkpad.jpg connector, specifically the dimensions and type of the gold-plated part. This might be hard to find, worst case I can pull it out and measure the dimensions but in my experience that's a very easy way to get something wrong....

R

EDIT: I should post some pictures of the hack as it stands. I'll try and do that today.

[automobus]

I doubt you will have enough room for a PMP on interposer to 2.5-size HDD.

How important is it to have a true HDD? Is your goal to have one hard disc and one flash disc, or is it to have two bootable AT Attachments? I ask because, if all you need is two bootable ATAs, then the component-part of your dream might today exist. Are you aware of Lycom ST-178 or BPlus SSDMR?

SSDMR contains ASMedia ASM1092, and I believe ST-178 is as well.

[flyingfishfinger]

Well the initial idea was to have one flash disk for fast boot, and one physical disk for large storage (1TB etc). I'd be nice to carry around my data, but it'll also be nice to have it be bootable because I sometimes like to play around with random operating systems.
Also, that leaves the 2nd miniPCIe slot empty for me to use with whatever else I come up with.

Those are pretty cool though. I'm not sure the ASM1092 is a better choice than the Silicon Image part, as the former are based in Taiwan and may be harder to communicate with..

R

[flyingfishfinger]

As promised, here are some pictures:

This is the mSATA adapter sitting in the PCMCIA slot. Regular SATA connectors were too fat to fit under the keyboard, so I used ribbon cable. Seems to work ok without shielding.

I removed the hard drive connector and directly soldered them to the adapter board

Gold fingers, this is the connector I'm after.

Anyone know the specs on this?

R

[axur-delmeria]

Very Interesting.

Instead of ribbon cable, you can try to:
1. remove the outer sheath of a SATA cable, making it thinner,
2. then wrap the now-exposed foil shield with Kapton tape.

Now the only problem is finding a mini PCIe SATA card that doesn't cause the BIOS to hiccup.

BTW, will this mini-pcie SSD work with the X61? http://www.supertalent.com/products/ssd ... re&type=59

[flyingfishfinger]

The problem was less the cable than the connector, at least on the mSATA end there wasn't any room. The cable, while it did fit, made the keyboard bulge slightly.
And yes, that product might work but its capacity only goes to 128GB.

The better question is, when will large-capacity 2.5" SSD beat large-capacity 5400RPM drives for cost / GB?

Right now, the largest available 2.5", 9.5mm tall regular drive is 1.5TB and costs $115, pending Samsung's 2TB M9T. An equivalent 2.5" SSD still costs about $650 for an mSATA version, so for the moment this hack seems to be worthwhile (not counting the cost of project parts. So far, I've spent about $250 on it, $108 for the Crucial M4 128GB mSATA drive and probably around $100 in parts, not all of which were necessary).

I have to admit I'm stuck though, since I'm having trouble getting the datasheet for my SATA port multiplier. Even though distributors will sell the part to anyone, SiliconImage won't release the datasheet to private parties...

Anyone want to do me a favor and try to get hold of it via their company? I'm currently between jobs / contracting, so I've been rejected from SiliconImage directly as well as their distributors....

R

[flyingfishfinger]

Unfortunately, I may have to abandon this project or seriously reconsider it. My lovely machine was stolen a few weeks ago, so all the modifications up to this point will have to be redone if I acquire an new X61. Sad times....

If there is enough support from all of you folks (in terms of a showing of interest or people interested in a setup like this), I'll be happy to pick it up again to demonstrate feasibility....until then, I'm truly sorry.


R

[axur-delmeria]

Ouch. That's sad to hear.

[flyingfishfinger]

I'm tempted to budget myself $500 and see how well I can do...
Still going for it.

R

[PandorasThinkpad]

Hey!

In my own thread, the one with "Hoooooray..." in the section X/61/-.--- aurora had given an link with an adapter from mini pci of express card, this would only be available in china or in usa. So you would be able to use express cards with usb 3.0 (for example).


So just decide if this would be a much better way to get the x61 more capable to nowadays.

We could change further words in the other threads, because this here closed with the stolen x61, this was really a hard and truly sad thing to you....

Regards,

PT

[crashnburn]

Interesting experiments