thechurchofcage

I'm in the same boat as you, buddy - still trying to find a compatible driver for that very same drive after weeks of searching at this point. Did you find anything that works in the end?

Here you go, man: https://www.amazon.com/Ableconn-MPEX-134B-Mini-PCIe-Adapter/dp/B0779727FY/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_147_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PFYV6DMNZ94QEX3QD42D They're a little pricey, though - I think there might be other ones that work as well, but I'm not going to order twenty different adapters to see which work and which don't!

If you look at the photo, you can see the white residue on the edge of an otherwise black motherboard. That stuff is NOT supposed to be there. It's on the screws, it's in the fan, it's left a coating on the inside of the case and it may have contributed to the fact that the mic and optical drive don't work. I don't feel comfortable leaving it on, especially since I intend to sell it.

This stuff is some sort of enamel coating - it takes A LOT of force. Already ordered my big jug of isopropyl booze though!

Yeah, that's what I was concerned about... I reckon I'll try half an hour or an hour and see what happens. I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice a MacBook for science

Thanks for the reply. That's good to hear, I'll try that. I can remove the heatsink before soaking and I'll be reapplying thermal paste anyway.

Thanks for the response, I'll try the isopropyl. I've tried using alcohol on the end of a Q-tip just like that, but again, it takes more force than I'm comfortable applying to sensitive electronics...

So, I bought a used MacBook the other day for cheap hoping to play around with it for a bit, fix whatever's broken, and then sell it on. When I received it, I noticed that it had been enamel coated - the body of the MacBook feels like porcelain. However, when I opened it up I found that the internals were covered in chalk-like enamel dust: It might not come across too well in the image, but there is a LOT of this dust and it is caked on. I can scrub the hard drive and the inside of the case with an alcoholic cloth (NOT a cloth with a drinking problem), but what about the motherboard? I don't want to scrub it (and this stuff does take a quite a bit of scrubbing to remove) but could I soak it in an alcohol or vinegar bath for a few hours to dissolve the dust without damaging the board? Thanks very much!

So, UPDATE! It turns out that the reason the SSD wasn't showing up was because of the adapter! I got a replacement one that worked straight away and the SSD showed up in This PC as an ordinary drive. After updating the SSD's firmware using a utility from Dell, I'm getting sequential read/write speeds of ~180-200MB/s, close to the limit of PCIe 1.0 and much higher than the theoretical cap for the machine's PATA interface! I will post the full DiskMark results soon. I followed the instructions in this guide in order to install Windows onto it in EFI mode and actually boot into it! Performance is considerably snappier than with an HDD (duh) but I'm running into BSOD's whenever Windows Update runs... Will post another update soon!

Thanks for the advice! It turns out that the M.2 to PCIe adapter wasn't working, so I got a replacement and the drive showed up in Windows fully functional! I had a go at installing the OpenFabrics NVME driver but I didn't see much of a performance increase, since the bottleneck is probably the interface at this level. I should point out that a SATA SSD isn't an option as the VAIO only has PATA. I can use an mSATA to ZIF adapter but I would still be limited to PATA speeds.

Haha, you're right about my phone being more powerful but old tech is more fun! The VAIO doesn't actually have a SATA interface, so sadly that's not an option. I do have an mSATA to ZIF adapter but I couldn't get it to work, and even if I did I would be limited to 133MB/s, which trounces the HDD but is still pretty crap. Even PCIe 1.0 is nearly twice as fast and I do think I've gotten it to work...

Ooh, so I have to find software to make it compatible with legacy BIOS systems? Thanks for the help! I'll post an update when/if I find something. I might have to go straight ahead with Clover bootloader.

Thanks for the reply! I expected that the SSD would not be detected in BIOS, but it is not detected in Windows either. It doesn't show up in Device Manager or anywhere. Do you know if there's some way I can perform some sort of hardware search for it in Windows?

Dear all! I'm fairly new to the PC modding scene and I'm particularly fond of collecting slightly older hardware - mostly things I was lusting over as a teenager and couldn't afford until now. An example of this is my beloved Vaio TZ (VGN-TZ31WN... gotta love Sony's classy naming scheme), which is sadly hopeless obsolete nowadays. In order to inject more life into it, I thought I would try installing an NVME SSD - specifically this one, an SK Hynix 256GB M.2 2230 affair - paired with an M.2 to mPCIe adapter (from here) - into its single mini PCIe slot currently occupied by the WiFi card. I'm aware that I'm limited to 1x PCIE 1.0 (or 2.0?) speeds, but even that would be around twice as fast as the current PATA limit. There's surprisingly little information about how to do this, with perhaps the closest thing to a guide coming from here. I gave it a go anyway and the device completely failed to show up. There are a myriad of reasons why it could have gone wrong (not least of which is the Chinese adapter...) but what steps can I take to eliminate probable causes? The PC is running Windows 10 with all updates as well as the "latest" BIOS (from 2009). I don't know if there is anything I can do in Windows though as the device does not show up in diskpart, diskmgmt, device manager or elsewhere. I have tried removing and reinserting several times. I have been unable to test the SSD and adapter so far, but am planning a test sometime soon in other systems (one with an M.2 NVME slot and another with an mSATA slot to see if it can convert a separate SATA M.2 SSD). I don't suppose I could ask for some advice? Thanks very much!

Hey, all! I recently purchased an untested Powerbook G4 15.2" (A1138 1.6GHz PPC, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7,200RPM HDD, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700) from eBay for a great price. It's in mostly great condition and works fantastically, except for the graphics card which I think is faulty: I'm not too familiar with Macs, but first impressions and some Googling suggests that this is most likely the case. I don't suppose anybody has any ideas on how to fix it? I don't really have the means to resolder or replace the GPU... Thanks!