mSATA on the X201: its possible

[surfboy]

I know I know, you probably think this is impossible. But its not. Its just an incredibly hard thing to do. It has been refuted on the Lenovo forums, and probably on here too. I thought I'd look into it anyway as I thought the hardware mod might be possible.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... 301#M20724
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... d-p/445605
"The planar has to have a special line run from mini-PCIe to SATA for this drive to be recognized/bootable - so older planars like X201 are just not compatible. I know the planars in all the coming ThinkPad Classic (T,W, and X) will support it and the new Edge E220s & E420s will. But I am not sure if the lower cost systems like regular Edge 14/15, L/SL-series, or X120e will support it or not."

But as found on this Chinese forum, there is a way.
http://www.ibmnb.com/forum/thread-1217414-1-8.html
(to see pictures you need to login. Use bugmenot1/bugmenot1 http://forum.51nb.com/logging.php?action=login)
Unfortunately the whole forum is in chinese. Google/Bing translate each have their qualities but its still not very clear, because a lot of the text is in the pictures. I guess that the BIOS also needs to be patched to allow non-whitelist miniPCIe cards to be accepted.

There are other threads:
http://www.ibmnb.com/forum/thread-1238551-1-1.html (this guy appears to be having some problems but the thread links to 3 other threads all with pictures of some pretty amazing wiring and soldering)

Can anyone help with a translation?

This is way beyond what I'm capable of but I think its amazing to see.

[yak]

From the pictures, it seems that they're not using the miniPCIe port but instead, route the SATA signals (A+/-, B+/-) from the UltraBase connector pins to a new miniPCIe port and then just find place for the miniPCIe flash drive somewhere in the machine (they're laying it on top of the WLAN/WWAN cards).

Presumably it means that you cannot use this together with another drive (optical or HDD) in the UltraBase. On the other hand, it means that no custom BIOS should be needed, just like you don't need it to use any HDD you want in the UltraBase.

The power (+3.3V) and GND are routed from the internal HDD port.

So there are 6 cables total going into the flash drive.

[twistero]

I was wondering where they got the "second SATA port." It makes sense if it's the Ultrabase connector.
But yes, all they did was to find an unused SATA connection (most likely from the Ultrabase connector) and wire it up to an mSATA SSD.

[houndkr]

This is one of the rather common Mods done in Korea as well.
The others got it right. You need to steal the SATA line from the Ultrabase socket.
If you have a SATA disk small enough to fit in the X200/201, (mSATA, for example) you can use two disks with the laptop/tablet.

The downside for this Mod, is 1) that you have to void the warranty, 2) you cannot use the Ultrabase anymore. Well, you can use Ultrabase if you block the specific lines for SATA signals from Ultrabase socket underneath the laptop, but you won't be able to use 2nd bay anyhow. Not unless someone figures out a way to build a 2nd SATA line, perhaps using a USB signal or so. It's gonna be a long and hard task if you are going to do that.

Mod itself is quite do-able, as far as I know.

[cros]

Most Intel chipsets have extra SATA ports that are unused. e.g. the ICH8M used in the X61 actually has 3x SATA ports and 1x IDE controller. If you're very lucky, the pins for these unused ports will have been tracked out on the PCB, opening the door for a workable hardware mod without any drawbacks.

The Lenovo BIOS won't have enabled the unused ports, so they won't show up in a PCI scan. A hacked BIOS or some utility would be needed too.

I used a similar trick on a T23 to get an extra internal USB channel to connect to a Bluetooth module.

[trymonlam]

Sorry to wake up a old thread.
The mod looks straight forward enough that I would like to attempt this.

Got a question though.
given the open mini pci-e ports on the board, would it be possible to just cut the connection of one off of the motherboard, and use the pin outs on the back to wire in power and sata signals, then mount the msata drive it in, say, CN13, directly above the lan card, for a cleaner install? it even has 2 screws to hold down the drive.

would any problems arise from cutting the connections off of a mini pci-e port and repurpose it?