OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Martin Iturbide on May 23, 2019, 06:05:59 pm

Title: M.2 Question
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 23, 2019, 06:05:59 pm
Hi

Just checking the hardware world today, trying to upgrade my brothers PC with a M.2 SSD I noticed that there two kinds of M.2 SSD.
1) M.2 SATA.
2) PCI express, PCIe or NVMe.
Here it is an article that I was reading about it (https://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/nvme-vs-m-2-vs-sata-whats-the-difference/). According to the article M.2 is just the form factor, so it is always important to check which technology it uses.

My question is, are both kind of technology on this form factor (M.2) not working on OS/2 - ArcaOS ?  or just one ?

Regards

Update: Corrected SDD to SSD
Title: Re: M.2 Question
Post by: Valery Sedletski on May 23, 2019, 09:56:49 pm
At least, NVMe requires special drivers for each OS, they are incompatible with AHCI (other similar standard).
So, it is impossible to use under OS/2, unless someone will write a driver. From the last Warpstock I heard that AN
plans to write a NVMe driver.
Title: Re: M.2 Question
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 23, 2019, 11:48:57 pm
Hi Valerius.

So a M.2 NVMe card will not work on OS/2/ArcaOS for sure.
What about a M.2 SATA card? Is it supposed to work like a normal SATA HDD ?

Regards
Title: Re: M.2 Question
Post by: Sigurd Fastenrath on May 24, 2019, 08:34:43 am
Hi Valerius. So a M.2 NVMe card will not work on OS/2/ArcaOS for sure.
What about a M.2 SATA card? Is it supposed to work like a normal SATA HDD ? Regards

Ja, (Yes) I am running my Customized Warp 4 and/or ArcaOS 5.03 on my Thinkpad 25. That was originally equiped with an M2 NVme 512GB SSD that I myself replaced with a M2 2280 1TB SATA SSD.

But please keep in mind: not all NVMe still do have SATA backward compatibility or a seperat SATA Controller, as far as I know.

You can read more about my observations with this problem and more about OS/2 on the Thinkpad 25 etc. here:

https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1417&p=10398&hilit=Thinkpad+25#p10398 (https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1417&p=10398&hilit=Thinkpad+25#p10398)

and here:

https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/214300-Umbau-Thinkpad-25-Ich-mach-mir-meine-Welt-wie-sie-mir-gef%C3%A4llt (https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/214300-Umbau-Thinkpad-25-Ich-mach-mir-meine-Welt-wie-sie-mir-gef%C3%A4llt)

Title: Re: M.2 Question
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 24, 2019, 02:12:16 pm
Thanks Valerius, Sigurd.

I wrote this on the wiki: https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/M.2_and_OS/2 (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/M.2_and_OS/2)
Let me know any suggestions you may have.

Talking about the M.2 form factor, does anybody knows if there any wireless adapter working on this kind of connector? I'm guessing if the same chipset supported on OS/2 (GEMAC / GENMU) will also work on M.2, but I think it is kind of unlikely to find it, because the supported chipsets may be old now.

Regards
Title: Re: M.2 Question
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on May 25, 2019, 11:24:13 am
M2 is just an PCIe bus in a different mechanical format, with the addition that it can also be accessed by the SATA controller and USB3 controller. This is different from the similar mSATA in that the latter is an SATA bus standard that uses PCIe like connectors.

i.e mSATA devices are always accessed via the on-board SATA controller and the MB firmware boots from them like it does any other SATA connected drive using SATA/IDE ot AHCI drivers after boot. M.2 cards *may* be accessed by the onboard SATA controller if you have an M.2 SATA SSD card. But note that while these M.2 SATA cards are usually just SATA drives they may also be PCIe devices that have onboard SATA controllers on them, these should be seen by the OS as normal SATA controllers

NVME drives are always seen as a part of the PCIe bus, so you need a driver for the controller on the drive, just like you do for the older PCIe NVME cards. If the BIOS can boot from PCIe (Not all can), it can boot from M.2 NVME, regardless of OS.

You can in fact get 2 different types of M.2 to SATA converters, one is passive and has just two SATA connectors on them and are accessed by the SATA controller, the other is active, has an onboard SATA chip and is accessed via the PCIe bus. (This is useful for Intel SoC's that only have 2 SATA controllers built in)

M.2 can also be accessed by USB3, but this is currently of limited use.