E6520 Owner's Thread

You'll have SATA with that card if your mPCIe slot's pin 21,23, 33,35 are SATA. Some netbooks and new notebooks with mSATA have that. The E6520 has pci-e pins there instead. So no carrot unfortunately.

 

Hmmmmm. Any idea of the actual pinout? I only ask as the a slot specifically states Sata Flash. Also, im looking for the WWAN pinout as well. It should have a USB only pcie configuration if im not mistaken. If so, I could at least use the card I ordered for that and wire in an internal USB device with it.

Either way I intend to test both slots.

Edit:
Nevermind, Found it on here. Now we just need to verify which the Sata Flash slot actually is.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/260993454691?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 is exactly what i ordered. It specifically states its a mini pcie card ( Which im assuming is what we have for the Sata Flash ). It also states Mini Pcie to USB / SATA, but i see no chips / Sata controller on it. Nando4, I saw your posting on the other thread regarding the matter. Looks like we still dont exactly know which it is that we have. I guess its a "wait and see". Dont worry, im not quite a novice and can follow point to point schematics / Solder ( I was actually a digital copy tech at one point on my life ). I will absolutely report back once i have some findings. My plan is to use that card to test both slots for USB or SATA functionality. I will attach a USB thumb drive as well as a SATA laptop drive ( With external power at first ) to see if i can get anything from either slot. Ill only be pulling data channels from SATA at first as it looks like the MSATA slot has power pinouts slightly different from PCI-E ( Pins 39 and 41 ). Ive plenty of desktop PSU's floating around so testing should be easy.


The card is still likely 1-2 weeks away though. Im going to go insane waiting LOL.
Dont worry, we WILL get to the bottom of this

 

That's what I was implying by the mini-PCIe SATA controller I posted earlier. It's a controller card that can have disks hooked up to it. The card you posted looks like an interface to an existing USB and/or SATA controller on the motherboard.

An mSATA drive has no controller on it, it's usually controlled by one on the motherboard, through mSATA pins in the PCIe slot. Nando4, in this post, suggests wiring the eSATA port from the right side of the machine back to one of the mini-PCIe slots so a card would have a home in the slot, get power, and talk to the on-board SATA controller. I imagine this would preclude the use of the eSATA port with another drive, but as I suggested, an eSATA card in the ExpressCard slot would make using eSATA drives possible.

The SuperTalent CoreStore MV card I have working right now has a Marvell SATA controller on it, which is why it works. As an aside, I posted to Super Talent's support forum in regards to getting signed x64 device drivers (see my previous post here on NBR.) They responded within 30 minutes with another driver package! I downloaded it but I won't have a chance to try it out until tonight or tomorrow.

Which leads me to another thought I had, which is an ExpressCard SSD. I've read people's comments where people have installed and booted an OS from them. However, they are slow compared to decent mSATA SSDs, have a really high price-to-gigabyte ratio, and you lose the use of the ExpressCard slot.

 

Your Corestore MV is pretty much acting like an expresscard SSD but is packaged as mPCIe instead. Both use pci-e pins so have a SATA controller on the card itself. Unless the bios is quite sophisticated such an arrangement will not allow bootup from the device. Which sort of defeats the purpose as you'd want such a SSD as a bootup device.

A mSATA slot is better as it wires the SATA pins on the Intel I/O chip to the mPCIe slot and the bios will have it as a bootable device.

If your system doesn't have a mSATA slot then you could make one by routing the SATA pins on an e-SATA port to a mPCIe slot, eg: WWAN. This is very easy on HP systems since they only have USB pins on those slots. Dell usually has pci-e ports + USB pins so it would be necessary to disengage the pci-e lines to pin 23, 25, 31, 33 prior to attaching SATA to those. Alternatively, could cellophane tape those lines on the mSATA SSD and wire the e-SATA SATA lines on the edge of those pins on the mSATA SSD itself. As the WWAN card already provides GND+3.3V, the mod would merely involve 4 shielded wires from the e-SATA port to the WWAN slot.

 

Im generally one to modify / solder to a board, however, im looking for a solution that doesn't involve killing off my 3 year next day warranty. Are we positive the SATA Flash port isn't wired for Sata devices? Ive been looking everywhere for the point to point for this motherboard, but im thinking only DELL engineers have access to it >.> It would be nice if this port does indeed have access to the internal sata controller on the motherboard. Its not terribly far fetched to believe especially since the Dock Connector supposedly has a SATA link as well. Dell has lines to the onboard controller piped to at least 1 other expansion port.

If it does, then the card I ordered should work when I connect a SATA drive to it. Ill know for sure as soon as it arrives. It wont take long to wire it up! If I go crazy waiting, ill likely tear apart an old Pcie WLAN card to test. Im trying to be patient

EDIT:
I did find this which has specific information to our E6520. It doesnt help much though but at least we have a complete tear down manual
http://supportapj.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latE6520/en/SM/sm_en/index.html

Im actually in a chat support session with a Dell Technician as i type this. Im hoping either they can clarify for us 100% what port this thing has, or at least get me access to someone who can. Ultimately im looking for the P2P Schematic of the mainboard. I doubt she will hand it over but you never know She did say this though " We are checking this system in our lab. I should have an answer for you shortly".

Ugh, the wait continues. An hour of chat leads to this:

1:06:12 PM Agent ProSupport Amber
+ From what I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a point-to-point schematic of the motherboard. If there is, no one seems to know how to get it.
1:06:27 PM Agent ProSupport Amber
+ We have run into a dead end in the lab. I'll tell you what
1:07:07 PM Agent ProSupport Amber
+ My team lead is at lunch right now. Would it be possible for me to research this issue with him and email you our results?


If she CAN get the point to point, she did say she doesnt see why she couldnt mail it to me which is a plus! Ive never had Dell let me down yet and their technicians are always so pleasant to deal with. I just hope we can find some clarification on this matter soon

 

hahaha... you do realize that "lunch" line really means, "I really don't know anything, and so I'm going to say that the people who know are at lunch and hope you never call back....."

 

Funny, I just got back the answer. Bad news to follow :



Wayne,

Here is the reply from engineering:

Robert, The SATA Flash slot is PCIE and intended to be used with the Pink Panther (DDPE) module. It is not bootable and there are no plans to make it bootable.

The Pink Panther DDPE is a hardware encryption solution just FYI

Regards,

Robert

 

Doh! I eat my words, then. even though they're unhappy ones for finding out that Dell wasn't as smart as Asus, HP, Lenovo and make the slots mSATA compatible.

I am *seriously* interested in trying to convert that slot to a true SATA II/III slot....... but, like you, I have a sweet 3year warranty that I don't want to mess up......

 

Dell's Precision notebook does support mSATA. However, it costs about $1000 more for the same CPU / Disk / RAM / Display setup and a better graphics card. I looked at it a few times but couldn't justify the extra cost for only those two differences.

 

Damn, what a shame

I have a 3 years Pro Support also... 2 years and 2 months left. After that we could try to connect the SATA lane from the docking port to the big mPCIe slot...but i think, we will own the next gen Latitude than, with mSATA and Thunderbolt and Ivy Bridge...