They LIED to me! - DDR4 RAM to M.2 SSD Adapter
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,928 words · ~9 min read
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You know, I rarely, if ever, have a chance to get bored
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because whenever I feel it coming on,
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all I need to do is fire up a web browser
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and then descend into what I call
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a related products black hole
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until I find something so mind-bendingly weird or stupid
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that I know that I simply must have one
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so I can try it out and share it with you guys.
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And because my websites of choice for these descents
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are ones like Taobao, AliExpress, Deal Extreme, and eBay,
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it is usually quite affordable and doesn't take that long.
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So without further ado,
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I present to you my latest find,
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the DDR4 memory to M.2 SSD drive adapter.
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How does it work?
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Well, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say,
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probably not the way that you'd expect.
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But I'm sure what you were expecting
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Okay, so what we've got here,
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if the product name is anything to go by,
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is a DDR2 M.2 hard disk adapter card
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sated to M.2 NGFFB key memory slot SSD expansion card.
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So what I gather from all of that
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is that we are adapting a DDR4 memory slot
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to an M.2 SSD drive slot.
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So I guess we should probably go get
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one of each of those things and give this a shot, shall we?
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Okay, so we've got our test bench,
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we've got our M.2 SSD,
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and we've got our bizarre adapter.
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So I'm gonna go ahead and pull out
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one of my memory sticks here.
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And actually, before we put this in,
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let's install an SSD on it.
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So they helpfully include this screwdriver.
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Put that into the, uh-oh.
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Oh, we seem to have a slight problem here, Houston.
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This does not fit in.
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How about if we try it the other way?
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No, even though it kinda looks like it'll go in,
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that still doesn't work.
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So what could be the problem here?
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I mean, other than that this is completely insane.
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All right, so we've missed something here.
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We did a bit of an explainer on this a while back,
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but don't blame me for not watching it.
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It was kind of boring.
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But M.2 is just a physical slot,
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and it can actually accept drives
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that use both the newer NVMe protocol
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and the older SATA-type drives.
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All we need is a SATA M.2 drive
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with the correct keying for this type of slot.
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So now that we're equipped with that,
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let's try again, shall we?
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So here's our WD Blue.
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You can see that, aha!
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Indeed, this does install now.
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Go ahead and grab our screw.
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Oh, look at that.
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Our free screwdriver is even, oh!
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It's even magnetic.
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Not very magnetic, mind you, just a little magnetic.
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Okay, so there it is.
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It feels a little like complete madness,
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and maybe it is, but hey, isn't that why we're all here?
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Fire it up, shall we?
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Oh, this is actually my first time
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using my test bench in the new office.
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I need to turn on my UPS.
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I need to plug in my UPS.
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Hey!
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There we go, all right.
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All right, you crazy little adapter.
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Show me your magic.
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Reveal to me your secrets.
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Okay, so as we'd expect, we're down to, oh, wow.
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All right.
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We're down to 24 gigs of RAM
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because we did remove one of our eight gig sticks.
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And as far as our storage drives go,
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we've got a whole lot of nothing going on here.
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Perhaps then that's why they included this.
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I think it was supposed to be red,
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but it actually ended up kind of pink, didn't it?
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Ah, SATA cable in the package.
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So let's shut her down and plug this baby in.
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Okay, so now that we're just using a SATA cable,
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we don't expect it to show up as a normal SATA drive,
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but the thing is there's still nothing.
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Nada.
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All right, so here's the thing.
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There are actually a lot of different ways
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that an adapter can function.
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So you know how if you buy a travel adapter
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for your electronic devices,
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there are the bulky ones that actually convert
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from 220 volts to 110 volts
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versus the simple ones that just physically change
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the shape of the prongs on your device.
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So if you want to change the shape of the prongs
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on your device to fit into another socket,
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well, those rely on the user to double check
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if their device has a universal input switching power supply
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kind of like this one.
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So the same kind of rules apply for computer adapters,
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and there are a number of different main kinds.
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The first one is what I call physical adapters,
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and these are very simple.
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Actually, here, I can grab one right now.
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This right here is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter. This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter. This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter. This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter. This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter. This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter.
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This is a USB-C adapter.
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And here, you can plug in a USB type A
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to USB Micro B adapter cable.
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And while Micro B does actually...
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This is fun fact.
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Have an extra conductor in the tip.
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It's only for sensing if a device
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that would normally be the target
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is supposed to act as a host.
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So this functionality was built for USB on the go, or OTG,
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and allowed you to plug accessories like network cards
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into devices like phones and tablets.
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For the vast majority of use cases though,
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that extra pin lies dormant.
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And all this cable does is run the same four conductors,
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power, ground, and then two data wires
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to two different shaped plugs.
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No modifications to the signal whatsoever
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are actually taking place.
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The second main kind of adapter
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is a little bit more complicated.
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I'm gonna call these signal mode adapters,
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for lack of a better term.
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These take some connector and convert it into another one
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that is totally different, but natively supported.
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These types of adapters
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tend to be relatively inexpensive still,
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thanks to the fact that the processing is being done
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on the computer or the device side.
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The last main adapter I'm gonna talk about
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is what I will call a complete adapter.
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These take an entirely unrelated signal
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and then actively convert it to something else in real time.
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An example of that is this.
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So this would be something like an HDMI to VGA adapter.
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HDMI has no legacy analog mode of operation
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and a VGA display device has zero understanding whatsoever
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of digital signaling.
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So these types of adapters tend to be more expensive
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due to the required processing power,
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like there will be chips inside.
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They tend to be bulkier for the same reason,
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and they also tend to be more expensive.
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They also tend to be directional, only working one way.
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So this one will take the HDMI port on your laptop
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and convert it to a VGA cable for that projector
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in the old conference room,
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but it would not go the other way around.
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It's also common for these to require
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an external power source in order to function,
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depending on what type of connection is being converted
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and whether it has power pins that can be utilized.
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So back to the topic at hand then.
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This device is a VGA adapter.
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This device was far less interesting
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than I had initially hoped right after I clicked on it.
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The geek in me would have absolutely loved to see
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some kind of crazy way to use a high-speed memory interface
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with a standard SSD.
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The issue is that such a product would have to have been
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designed from the ground up for that type of access,
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like Intel's Optane DIMMS,
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that they actually, I think, just finally started releasing,
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because a normal computer would have no idea
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what to do with a storage device plugged into a memory slot.
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The interfaces are absolutely nothing alike.
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Once I accepted that my pipe dream wasn't happening,
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I decided I would still be pretty happy
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with having my drive powered by the memory slot
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with only a SATA data cable required
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in order to get it working,
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which is to say that I was pretty disappointed,
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when I figured out what was actually going on here.
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And I kind of wondered why they bothered
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to mount this thing on a DIMM at all,
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because if you look closely near the pins here,
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you'll actually see that none of them are connected
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to any traces on the printed circuit board,
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which means that we're pretty much just wasting
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the gold plating on these connectors,
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and we could have just as easily double taped this thing
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to the side of another component,
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or left it hanging off of the cables,
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making this, I would say,
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somewhere in between a type one and type two adapter,
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because we're pretty much just taking these pins
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and converting them,
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it looks like we're doing a little bit of something to it,
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to these pins over here.
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The good news is that once it's all hooked up correctly,
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our drive does indeed show up.
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Here's our 500 gig drive,
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and we can probably even boot to it.
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So M.2 SATA folks, there it is.
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I'm just a little disappointed,
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because I had hoped there was a little bit more
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exotic technology going on,
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and this is pretty much just a simple physical adapter.
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Oh well.
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