Radxa M.2 E key to SATA breakout card on Armbian. HDD is not visible. [UNRESOLVED]

#21

Yep, I’ll definitely do this :slightly_smiling_face:
Main trouble right now - I’ll bend it if screw it properly. Will need to make it Euclidean first.

#22

This is easy to solve :slight_smile:
I just replaced plastics clips for long plastic screws on same spring, some of those:
image

Touching inductor should not be a problem, still You can just remove bottom plate, board will be much more flexible and easier to damage, but this wont happen if You don’t plug/unplug sata ports while card is in m.2 slot.

#23

I ordered a ‘blue ROCK5B’ on aliexpress but got a ‘green’ one. Also ordered a E-key breakout board, again a different one then the picture showed, but it fits on the ROCK5B without cracking the solder on the connector needed for ROCK3A.

Also ordered a ASM1166, same as written earlier in this topic, it touches PCB components on the ROCK5B, but ‘it works’. I removed 1 metal screw that holds the plastic isolate plate, so it also did work in my NanoPi-R6C without risk of shortcutting PCB components below. I might use it permanently with my ROCK3A sometime in future, but needs a custom case design, which currently is a piece of wood to hold the M.2 M-key NVMe in its place (it is my NAS currently).
The ROCK3A only works with Raxda U-Boot + vendor kernel + vendor sata_overlay (Armbian build), that will become a problem as the Rockchip 6.1 SDK based kernel has some stability issues (and is getting ‘old’) although no fatal crash until now, but that is because already complicated mitigations I did.

Back on topic, the ROCK5B + breakout board works as expected and has a 3 software/firmware/OS stacks working, tested all 3, meaning I can use the ROCK5B with NVMe SSD in M-Key and SATA HDD in E-key simultaneously.

  • vendor U-Boot + vendor kernel + vendor sata_overlay (all Armbian build)
  • mainline (edge) U-Boot + mainline kernel + mainline sata_overlay (all Armbian build)
  • EDK2_UEFI 1.1 with SATA ‘1’ enabled in settings + mainline kernel (armbian build kernel, up to 6.15.0-rc1)

I already forgot I wrote the schematics analysis here, but it is correct and verified now. The (mainline) overlay needed for the breakout board is the generic RK3588 sata1 one, the sata2 also shows a AHCI port in dmesg, but HDD does not work, because that should turn the USB3 port(s?)/connector(s?) into SATA. A sata0 is not there as overlay, similar is greyed-out in EDK2_UEFI as it is the PHY for the PCIe 2.5GbE ethernet controller.

So I am glad this E-Key slot is usable as I guessed/hoped/thought. Pity that I need to drill a hole in the Radxa ROCK5B aluminum case for the SATA cable, but that is easier than maybe solder a USB3-SATA cable (see my other topic SATA on Rock5B via M.2 E-key_board or USB3_connector). And my ROCK3A system/NAS can now be replaced by ROCK5B (when I want).

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