NecroFlex

Wanted to toss in a few corrections and shed some more info on how the SSD side of things works on Apple Silicon (and also T2 macs by extension) since there was a lot of info missing or glossed over or not exactly accurate. This info can explain a lot about why macs are the way they are, why people struggled with upgrades on M1 Studio/M2 Studio Macs, and such. This will be a long post with a lot of info, but it will paint a clear picture of whats *actually* happening under the hood. 

Disclosure: I do work at an Apple Authorized Service Provider as my main job and therefore get a deeper understanding of how Apple's repair system works, and I do some board level Rossmann-style repairs on the side as well for money and spare change (Apple pays Service Providers peanuts, but thats a topic for another day).

For starters, It was said in the video that Apples SSD's utilize standard NVMe in order to chat with the NAND modules. They do not use NVMe and have not since the introdiction of T2 model Macbooks. Apple uses their own proprietary standard that simply runs over PCIe, so that's one huge but super crucial difference as far non-apple module upgrades go. Source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Mac-Studio-SSD-does-not-work-on-NVMe-top-level-ARM64-SSD-controller-in-M1-Ultra-makes-it-nearly-impossible-to-swap-out-or-add-raw-storage-modules.609363.0.html This alone is enough to hinder most upgrades, but it goes way way way deeper. The way they actually work and communicate is a lot more complicated than you think, which you can guess based on the size of this post. 
 
Now for some Apple Storage Lore:

When the 2010 MacBook Air launched, it came with a proprietary SSD connecter that had a 6+12 pin layout. Even though the connecter is proprietary, it uses standard SATA AHCI, making it very easy to upgrade years down the line to mSata when it finally became abundant. The reason for this proprietary connecter is actually very simple, at the time when the MacBook was being developed, mSata was *just* announced in Mid 2009, which was already too late as far as the prototyping stages go, Plus at the time basically nothing utilized that standard. they used this specific connecter until 2012, when they redesigned it with a new 7+17 pin layout. it's still use the exact same signalling so I'm not sure why it was changed specifically, but it was also trivially easy to adapt to mSata and later Sata m.2. disconnect stayed until mid 2013 when Apple adopted a new 12+16 pin connector, which switch over to PCIe AHCI. This connector was in use from 2013-2019. even though at this time M.2 was announced, it wouldn't see actual usage until around 2015 in laptops so once again Apple simply designed its own standard because nothing viable and proven existed at the prototyping stages. Eventually with the release of high sierra, all those 12+16 pin drives were upgraded to utilize PCIe NVMe in order to facilitate the usage of the newly release APFS FIle System, which also was officially released with High Sierra. While upgrades of these 12+16 drives are possible, there are a lot of quirks with adaptor reliability, kernel panic issues after sleep/hibernate on 2013/2014 due to unfixed firmware bug, as well as a variety of wacky thermal and power draw differences between different brands of m.2 NVMe drives. Pain in the ass, but not the end of the world as far as drive stuff goes.

An example on a 2015/2017 Macbook Air with an M.2 adapter and Sabrent M.2 SSD. 

Moving on to 2016/2017, which is where things start to get interesting. There was 2 types of Machines released around this era, the Touchbar and Non-Touchbar variants. The more interesting one is the Touchbar, which we will get to in a bit. The Non-Touchbar introdiced a new connector type for SSD's yet again, a 22+34 Pin connector which sort of vaguely resembled a miniature PCIe slot in a way, but functionally was the same thing as the previous 2015 model. More than likely the SSD form factor was changed to physically fit into the design of these new logic board shapes, though this is me speculating. Ultimately its a minor note anyways because it was short lived and the Touchbar Mac is way more unique. The Touchbar Macbooks is where the SSD soldering stuff *truly* started. Yes I know 12" exists but that was for actual miniaturization reasons anyways given the logic board is smaller than a phone. Touchbar Mac intriduced the T1 chip, which was a small Coprocessor based on an Apple Watch S2 SIP. It was responsible for controlling Touchbar, handling Apple Pay, storing TouchID Data in Secure Enclave (SEP). Here is a block diagram of a T1 equipped Mac.


Take note of the SPI ROM chip with the Intel UEFI stuff, this will be important later. SPI ROM chip is functionally the equivalent of your computers Bios/UEFI, but with 0 user controls. It stores info like machines serial #, Intel ME Region stuff, Trusted Execution stuff, Machine Identifiers, and other such info that is needed for a Mac to actually Chime (post) and turn on. In this scenario, dead SSD wont wipe out anything SPI ROM related (foreshadowing!). This Block diagram also explains why the 2016/2017 Touchbar Macs are the only ones that had the Lifeboat connector on them, which is a connector used by Apple Techs like myself to do data recovery if the Logic Board is dead. It connects to a little black box that effectively connects directly to the PCie x4 link and acts as a PCIe to USB-c adapter and looks like this. 
On these models, it *is* possible to replace the SSD if it dies, but you effectively need to remove the NAND modules, controller, as well as a few other components and add a specialty PCB that solders directly to the PCIe X4 solder pads so you can utilize any tiny M.2 NVMe SSD's. 

In Late 2017, Apple introdiced the iMac Pro with the T2 Chip, and the T2 equipped Macbooks and Mac Mini. This is where the fun *really* starts, so pay attention. T2 macs are going to lay the basis for Apple Silicon macs, so all of this needs to be explained.  Lets start with a block diagram of a T2 Mac:

We can see a lot of new changes here, all of which I will explain. The T2 chip, which is basically a customized Apple A10 CPU, controls all sorts of things like TouchID, Touchbar, Audio, Facetime Camera, Intel eSPI, Power Managmement, etc. Its so complex that it runs its own OS called BridgeOS, which is basically a really scaled down version of iOS. Much like an iphone, it also has DFU mode (Device Firmware Upgrade, this will matter later) which allows it to be restored using another Mac. Notice the mising SPI ROM chip? we will get to the UEFI side of things, but basically the T2 chip boots from the chip that stores iBoot (apples own bootstraping stuff) which then boots BridgeOS. The whole operation of T2 chip is basically that of an iphone thats been frankensteined into the Logic Board of an Intel Mac, Its like 2 computers running at once.  On top of all this, the NAND used on T2 models onwards is...... very very different from literally anything else on the market. They are NOT standard NANDs like what youll find on a normal M.2 drive. The only other product that uses similar NAND are other Apple devices like iPhones and iPads.

Important notes about these NANDs:
- Each NAND is made by either Samsung, SK Hynix, Kioxia, Sandisk, and each one of them has a custom ARM-based controller thats also runs its own miniature OS as firmware, and acts as an intermediary between the PCIe x1 connection and T2 chip as wear as other NAND management stuff like wear levelling.
- These NANDs are CUSTOM DESIGNS! They CANNOT be found anywhere outside of Apple devices, and they CANNOT be purchased (apart from Mac PRo SSSD kit, more on that later)
- Each Logic Board has a pre-defined number of NANDs on them based on the chosen storage option from factory, and all the NANDS are paired together at a firmware level, meaning each set of NANDs behave as a singular unit after firmware is installed.
- These firmwares, which are specific to not only the NAND OEM, but also the NAND's capacity, cannot be interchanged with each other. Lets say your mac has 2x Kioxia 128gb (256gb Mac). We will call this firmware K128. If you wanted to swap one NAND with Samsung 128, which we will call firmware S128, They will not work because K128 and S128 are not shared. Same applies for every configuration (2x128gb, 4x64gb, 4x128gb, 6x 180gb, 4x1TB, etc). Theres more complications with swapping in 2x S128 NANDs which youll see later on...
- These firmwares also carry important data like TBW stats, power on time, SMART, etc. 
- These NANDs striped all data across them, similar to Raid0 (though its not *actually* Raid). This includes OS data, User Data, UEFI (below), and other stuff
- In the diagram above, notice how the intel UEFI is missing? Well, thats because it is split across all NANDs! They moved it from its little SPI ROM chip onto each NAND. This has a very fun effect where any dead NAND chip = machine wont even power on, because part of the critical Intel UEFI is litearlly missing. This UEFI striping will matter later as well. 

If you find and poke through schematics for these T2 Macs, you'll find sections similar to this:
This is from a 15" 2018 model Macbook Pro.

Dont be overwhelmed by the Schematic stuff! It's not super difficult. The columns indicate Internal Part Number, Part Quantity, part Info, Location on Logic Board, Part Importance to rest of system, and BOM (bill of materials) Group, which is just to figure out part costs and sourcing logistics and such for other internal teams. The prefix for each NAND stands for the type of controller and firmware running on chip (S3E, S4E, S5E) and suffix for each NAND (TS,WD,HY,SM) just stands for Toshiba,Western Digital, Hynix, and Samsung respectively. Also, notice the wacky capacities for some of them? 85GB chips, 170GB chips, etc. There's all sorts of these for various models. Now, lets refer to the total number of occupied chips as FLP (Functional Landing Pad). The S4E_1TB_WD option would be 6x WD 170GB NANDs paired together, giving us an FLP of 6 on that specific config. There's 2 other terms that will matter, NFLP and TLP. NFLP is Non-Functional Landing Pads, which are just locations on the board that are unoccupied and are missing their respective components. TLP refers to the Total Landing Pads, or the total number of spots NANDs could theoretically go. TLP is calculated by adding FLP's and NFLP's. Since the 2018 15" model has 8 TLP's, it means that depending on which storage config you have, you get either 4,6, or 8 NANDs total, with the remaining unoccupied Landing Pads becoming NFLP's. 

Here is a chart of Landing Pads for each T2 unit: 

But before we can do anything, there are also a few rules to these T2 Mac NAND swaps:
1: 128gb/256gb/512gb T2 Macs cannot exceed 512gb of storage. This is because the T2 SoC only has 1GB onboard Mem. 1TB models and up have 2GB Mem T2 variant. T2 itself also cannot be swapped for another for a multitude of other reasons. You're stuck, sorry. 
2: All NANDs must be moved as a set. You cannot mix and match NAND quantities, NAND brands, or NAND Capacities.
3: Macs will Larger FLP's can swap in NAND sets that come from Same or Lower FLP quantities, but cannot accept NAND sets from higher FLP configurations. Ex. Mac Mini with 4x FLP's can accept NAND sets from other macs with 4/3/2 FLP's, but cannot accept NAND sets from 6/8 FLP units, while Mac Pro 2019 can accept NAND sets from all other models provided other rules are followed.
4: NAND's must fill each Ports Landing Pads in order(Landings 0,1,2,3 on port 00. Refer to Block Diagram above!), and NAND sets must fill all landings on the 00 port in the block diagram before the 01 ports landing pads can be used at all. Example, swapping over 3 FLP's must be put into landings 0,1,2 on port 00 to work, 0+2+3 will not work, and putting those 3 FLP's into 01 port also will not work, they must go into port 00 since 00 isnt saturated. Swapping over 6 FLP's will fill port 00's 0,1,2,3 landings, as well as port 01's 0,1 landings. 

So, we can finally get into how some repairs are done. Basically, you have 3 choices: Used Donor NANDs, Used Donor Programmed NANDs, New Donor NANDs. 
- Used NANDs are basically pulled off of a board that has a compatible FLP number, and they are moved into each landing on each port accordingly (port00 nand0 to port00 nand0 on second board, port 00 nand1 to port00 nand1, etc). Upside is that it retains all data about NAND (TBW's, SMART, power-on hours, etc), downside is its used NANDs which means possibility of more worn down NANDs is there
- Used Programmed NANDs are basically same-size same-brand NANDs pulled from multiple boards, and using special programming jig, are flashed with pulled NAND firmware from another set of NANDs of same size and OEM, and each firmware is also paired in a striped manner (mystery NAND0 flashed with FW from good NAND0 firmware image, mystery NAND1 flashed with pulled FW  image from good NAND1, etc). Upside is that sourcing nands is easier and you can "create" a paired set, downside is that all the old firmware, including TBW and SMART and power-on and such is wiped and replaced with Fake data, so you have no clue how *actually* worn down your NANDs are. Pray they arent awful and dont die soon!
- New Donor NANDs is basically buying the Mac Pro SSD Upgrade kit, and pulling the NANDs onto the target board. Those Kits are pretty much always 8 FLP's meaning it will only wiork with other macs that support 8 FLP's (15"/16"/MacPro2019/iMacPro). 13" models cannot utilize this because of rule 3 above.

Assuming you follow all the rules above and successfully do the repair, now you just have to put the Target Mac into DFU mode, and restore it using Apple Configurator 2. On T2 models, this will wipe out all the data on NANDs and reinstall fresh Intel UEFI firmware across all FLP's, as well as installing the most current version of BridgeOS which allows T2 to work. After this, your machine boots up, goes into Internet Recovery mode in oder to Activate itself and fetch its Activation Profile (which sets things like iCloud Lock statis, if its under Device Enrollment Program which is remote management for enterprise clients, Wifi Region, and other parameters for that model). After this, assuming its not iCloud locked, just reinstall MacOS! And NOW you have working mac, unless another NAND goes of course, in which case you repeat process. 

Now, FINALLY onto Apple SIlicon. Luckily this section is short because Apple Silicon obeys almost all the rules and limits and quirks above, but with a few notable differences:
- Rule 1 of NAND swaps does not exist. The other rules apply for NAND swaps still. 
- Rule 4 becomes very important specifically for upgrades on the Mac Studio, and the recently released Apple Silicon Mac Pro. the reason being that port 00 and port 01 are literal physical port for the NAND carrier cards, and their physical placement inside the machine matters for this reason. This was never specifically documented on The Intel Mac Pro and iMac Pro specifically because both of those shipped with port 00 and port 01 populated with storage carrier cards, meaning that because of the Nando swap rules above, you can technically utilize basically every other capacity after DFU restore. This is why YouTuber and publications were having so much trouble getting consistently working upgrades on Mac Studio, or even storage swaps in general. They kept putting stuff in the wrong ports, or they purchased a studio that had all of Port01 set as NFLP from the factory (2TB and below iirc)! If you want to utilize both, you basically have to invest into the 4 TB model and up, otherwise you will be limited to single slot on the M1 max/M1 ultra Mac studio. More than likely the exact same stuff applies to The M2 version of the studio, as well as the recently released M2 Mac Pro. 
- T2 NANDs CANNOT be utilized on Apple Silicon due to electrical reasons! On Apple SIlicon macs, the NAND chips got power efficiency improvements. The old T2 chips operate at 2.7volts while the APple SIlicon NANDs operate on 2.5v, meaning they arent intercompatible. You can only source them from other Apple Silicon models
- Because Apple Silicon doesnt have anything Intel, all the striped Intel UEFI nonsense is gone, but instead replaced with iBoot for Apple Silicon bootstrapping. DFU restore basically reinstalls iBoot as well as Mac OS APFS Snapshot at the same time, similar to iPhone DFU restore. 

Here's a block diagram for reference:

So yeah, this is why we cannot realistically expect Apple Silicon and T2 macs to be upgradable in any form, even with consumer NANDs, and also some of the decisions surrounding pricing, part choices, why upgrading the removable storage models is a pain. This super-custom design is like a huge factor with regards to part pricing, since RnD on stuff like this is not exactly cheap, even for Apple. Not saying I condone this level of ridiculousness, but I can see why standard consumer, or even enterprise grade SSD pricing likely doesnt scale here. 

Now' I'll leave you with this nugget. The Schematic for the M1Max 16" Macbook Pro references NAND sockets, meaning that during prototyping, they were routinely swapping NANDs in and out. With that said, these types sockets are not small at all and require extra hardware to basically pressure fit the NAND to the Board, so the odds of this being a "They Couldve added tiny sockets!!!" scenario is extremely small and likely unrealistic.

 
Hopefully this adds a lot of important context about how it works on Apples side of things, which is.... literally like nothing else out there.
 
Huge shoutout to iBoff RCC on Youtube for creating this amazing 1 hour long video explaining all of the above in a visual sense! I used a lot of screenshots from their video because honestly its way easier than creating my own and they did a fantastic job explaining a lot of details anyways. I added a bunch of Apple Service Provider context as well as my own screenshots from my own info stash as well. 

And of course, Daily reminder to run Time Machine backups routinely!
 
 
 
 

you would need an adapter to convert the signal, like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/313485827899?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28 (if it could be made to work, it seems you would need to cut the harness and split it into 30 and 10)
not sure how well it would work, can't see this being worth doing on such old hardware either, considering you could probably figure out something better to do with the money.

The reason it's clocked lower is cause it's server greade and servers need reliability, not pure power with a chance of potential crashes. One of the reasons gaming GPUs clock that high, they don't need 100% stability nor do they run 24/7.
 
I just need windows to see it as a high performance GPU, that's all. Would nvflash be good enough or would i need to use my ch341?

I did, i also tried to entirely disable it, but same result.

Yea then just don't use the wan/internet port and turn off dhcp and your good.

I'll try that but i think at one point we only had a PS/2 KB plugged in. Will also change the CMOS battery just in case.

Are there any good voice changers out there? I've seen youtubers changing their voice in their videos, but i never thought if that's post production or if they also do it on the fly with a specific program. Like changing your voice a bit for deeper or higher pitches or making it robotic or static or anything like that.
Free or paid, i don't mind either, any recommendations? 

eh, i've ran games from an external 5400RPM HDD before, i'd say as long as it's not usb 2.0 it's not horrible...

Ahh ok, figured as much but still took a shot if anyone knew.
 
Figured as much, idk what i'd use the 8GB for anyway, but wanted to see if it was possible.
Sadly a 2013 drive is out of warranty  Got it for free anyway, so oh well.
 
One more question, i have one of those SSHDs in my PS3, does the controller know what to do there aswell or is the 8GB part just wasted there?

Very interesting. The marking are very clear, they look brand new. I just bought an E5-2680 v2 and the markings are very worn down, which seems to happen to most Intel CPUs. 
 
I guess it is an ES, which do run at 1.5 and just remarked to look like the production model. Thanks for keeping me posted, the mystery is solved. 

It's somewhat a fake, tho from what this tells me is that it was an ES version remarked to look like a real one or something, which is interesting.

Sorry, they are "passive" in the way that they don't have the additional chip on them for the boards that don't support the PCIe Bifurcation. But yes as long as they don't have the chip on them, they are technically passive and not too expensive ie. 50$ instead of 1000$ or so.

Probably because they want to get people away from anything other than W10, why they keep it up tho, not sure, probably just in case.
 
I'll most likely DL many of these things to keep it on my own server if this shuts down in the future, you never know when some XP patch will come in handy

reinstalling worked, tho i installed the 32-bit version instead of the 64-bit one, could have been that. Thanks for the help!

I'll see if i can get a warranty replacement because HDSentinel shows it has 222 bad sectors even tho it only has 8 days of use, not sure how. I checked the ISN with Intels warranty check and it should still be under warranty till 2021

So in the AiO i made i started to have issues with USBs. They work...as long as the things connected have been connected since the PC start-up.
Started happening recently, if stuff is connected when the PC turns on, it'll work no problems, but i cannot connect anything after that, not sure why this is happening, drivers are in order aswell. Haven't tried reformatting yet but will do that later on if need be.
The USBs work after ~10min of being connected. Correction on the ''not working at all'' part, but like i said before, if connected before the PC startup they work fine from the start.
Any suggestions? This is the PC in question:
 
https://imgur.com/a/YC7Ig

this...this boggles my mind..so i first reflashed the latest bios, no luck, flashed an older bios,, it worked...but...sometimes it did, sometimes didn't...as you can see from the pics below, word in advance, the pictures might sting a bit.


 
I have no clue as to why it did that, later on it normally installed the WD disk driver but it just still didn't wanna work normally...i was out of ideas after 3h of tinkering and such.
 
I'd say the mobo is the problem but if the chipset was fucked, wouldn't the 6Gbps connectors be dead too considering it's the H67 chipset that's controlling them?

will try tomorrow, thanks for the help

Try going to history (Ctrl+H), click 'Tabs from other devices' and see if it's still there.

Curiosity, looked interesting, thought it was a picoboard of sorts, would be nice for a small PC  

a lot of times they use actual stuff, that's why i was curious.My bad if this question wasn't to your liking judging from those dots in the end.

first pic, need 1 more tower cooler

and yes, it's ziptied down

i have 2 580 water blocks from them, need one? Pay for shipping and it's yours
 
Also will post pics, for that internet karma

Was thing about that too, if i find them.
 
I could also call EKWB since they are based in my country, they might have a 295x2 WB sitting in storage not doing anything, worth a try.

I don't think that's for PCI.