[MinnowBoard] SATA Power Options

[David Anders]

David,

On 09/12/2014 02:23 PM, David Rolfe wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for your reply John, and it does look as if J2 would indeed be 
> an ideal 'point' from which to obtain a 5v supply for something like a 
> SATA SSD, but as I understand it these are not populated on current 
> production boards, which I take to mean that the actual pins them 
> selves are not in fact present, and so not therefore really a 
> practical option for the average 'user'.
>

the J2 header was intended to power a fan when using the Baytrail-M if 
populated. since we aren't using those on the retail version of the 
board, we decided to not populate J2. all of our use cases we had did 
not include powering an external sata device directly from the minnowmax.

> If that is indeed the case, surely it would not have added much to the 
> total build cost for these to have been included?
>

the Bill-of-Material is extremely tight on the MinnowMax so every penny 
counts....

> Is there any chance that this could possibly change in the future? 
> (Probably more of a question for Dave!)
>

we are looking at some options for this. we are also looking at making a 
minor modification for revB of Minnowmax to help with powering external 
sata devices...

Dave


> As an interesting aside, I would love to know whose SD cards do 
> actually have a 90 Mb/s speed rating... any chance of a hint please?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David (Rolfe)
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 13:23:39 +0000
> From: "Hawley, John" <john.hawley at intel.com>
> To: MinnowBoard Development and Community Discussion
> <elinux-minnowboard at lists.elinux.org>
> Subject: Re: [MinnowBoard] Where to install Linux (or other OS) on a
> MinnowBoard Max
> Message-ID:
> <2EED2AA90ADADC4B86683C59957EF02F012FADB7 at ORSMSX106.amr.corp.intel.com>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> With the base board there's a couple of things you can boot from with 
> reasonable performance:
>
> - SD Card (if you are going to do that I recommend a larger SD Card, 
> BTRFS and adding the compress=[zlib|lzo] option to the boot flags)
> - USB 3.0 (same general recommendation as an SD Card assuming it's 
> flash based)
> - SATA (either disk, or Disk On Module (DOM))
>
> The first two don't require you to fish out power from another source, 
> so that's useful.  The real downside to both an SD Card and a USB 3.0 
> flash based solution is there's limited number of writes you can do to 
> an SD Card, and there's a *LOT* of cheap/slow options out there (so 
> buyer beware, there's even a huge variance in speed in the Class 10 SD 
> Cards ranging from about 10MB/s (that's all class 10 means is a 
> guaranteed minimum of 10MB/s) to 90MB/s (which are the ones I've been 
> picking up).  USB Flash drives vary even more wildly, so it's even 
> harder to make a recommendation there.
>
> The SATA options (sans an mSATA lure for example), do need power, and 
> there's two places on the board you can get it:
> - Low Speed Header (as suggested by David Rolfe), though I wouldn't 
> myself recommend that
> - J2 which was intended as a fan header, but if you add a header it's 
> a reasonable place to pull power from.
>
> The other option (if you are ok with an additional power supply) is to 
> use an external USB sata adapter's power supply (if you snag the ones 
> that don't have a case they often have a power adapter). This is the 
> way I do it.
>
> - John
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: elinux-minnowboard-bounces at lists.elinux.org [mailto:elinux-
>> minnowboard-bounces at lists.elinux.org] On Behalf Of David Rolfe
>> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2014 6:07 AM
>> To: elinux-minnowboard at lists.elinux.org
>> Subject: [MinnowBoard] Where to install Linux (or other OS) on a
>> MinnowBoard Max
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>> Following Roel Jordans installation comments, I was wondering if it 
>> is indeed
>> recommended to install an OS onto a (suitably large) micro SD card?
>>
>> Presumably an external SATA SSD drive is a preferred option but then of
>> course there is the problem of an external power supply etc. - 
>> Possibly from
>> one of these extension leads which include a USB socket for charging 
>> mobile
>> phones?
>>
>> Although a 5v supply can always be obtained from pins 1 & 3 of the low
>> speed expansion header. this would presumably then be lost if a lure was
>> fitted?
>>
>> Comments would be appreciated!
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> David (Rolfe)
>
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