[Novalug] Non-standard mini-PCIe pin-outs for ATA bridged SSD -- WAS: Non-standard mini-PCIe cards longer than 50.95mm (2") ...

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Wed Oct 28 17:02:40 EDT 2009


Okay, I've done some further reading and it seems that none of
these things will work.  It seems both the Acer and Dell are using
a proprietary pin-out that brings the ATA lines through non-reserved
mini-PCIe pin-outs.  I.e., there's no ATA bridge on-board the card
itself, only an expected pin-out that is non-standard.

Samsung is allegedly introducing new products shortly that will
have an SATA bridge, plus Cache (SRAM? DRAM?) plus the
NAND EEPROM.  I guess I'll just wait for those:  
http://www.siliconmadness.com/2009/06/samsung-mini-pcie-ssd.html  

-- Bryan

P.S.  Some vendors have solved this issue by just leveraging a
simple USB bridge.  That, of course, will kill performance as USB
2.0 isn't capable of breaking 30MBps block device performance.
But these designs seem to be different, with a full SATA interface
on-card, along with cache and other, performance-enhancing logic.


----- Original Message ----
From: Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org>
To: Northern Virginia Linux User\'s Group <novalug@calypso2.tux.org>
Sent: Wed, October 28, 2009 4:31:15 PM
Subject: Re: Non-standard mini-PCIe cards longer than 50.95mm (2") ...

I'm still looking for 51mm long mini-PCIe NAND EEPROM SSD
options.  So far it doesn't look good and most vendors are only
using an older ATA mode 6 (133MBps) bridge, instead of a newer
SATA (300MBps) bridge, which means they are under 100MBps.
They are also only 32GB or smaller.

The few options I'm finding in the 51mm (50.95mm) long are the 32GB
units that are ATA mode 6 (133MBps) and top out at 90MBps reads.  
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=FEM32GFDL  
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609432  

They are typically labeled "Dell Mini 9" whereas the "Acer" and others
are definitely the non-standard, 70mm (69.5mm) long.  I don't want to
use the "double wide" ones for the Dell Mini, as I still need my 802.11.

I think I'm going to be waiting for a bit.  Just wish there were more
51mm long options.  It's not just a mounting issue because the extra
2cm won't physically fit because my notebook's fan is only 1cm away
from the mount holes at 51mm.

Anyone seen anything?  I also really dislike NewEgg for not bothering
to list the length, which eWiz at least does (although I overlooked it
before ordering).

----- Original Message ----
From: Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org>
To: Northern Virginia Linux User\'s Group <novalug@calypso2.tux.org>
Sent: Fri, September 25, 2009 5:22:27 AM
Subject: Non-standard mini-PCIe cards longer than 50.95mm (2") ...

Apparently I was ignorant of the fact that some NAND EEPROM
SSD mini-PCIe cards are non-standard, and are longer than
a full-length (50.95mm ~ 2") mini-PCIe card.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-PCIe#PCI_Express_Mini_Card  

Just FYI.  If you purchase a NAND EEPROM SSD mini-PCIe card
for your system, verify it is not longer than 50.95mm, or it might not
fit.  It seems several netbooks are such, so vendors are shipping
such non-standard lengths.




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