Thunderbolt-PCIe bridge solutions exist but are quite expensive. I suggested for PCIe breakouts in the form of SFF8643 (Oculink) connectors. You can then design whatever cursed creation you have on your mind with said PCIex8 link. A PCIe mux (not that expensive, if you don’t mind going 1/2 gen down), add external power, and you are basically good to go.
This is in my original post, as well.
mid-mount (in-PCB) USB-A ports exist.
But my question is why many people so want to make dongle hiders.
You can achieve that by … making recessed connectors. Even a mild 3mm/5mm recess would eliminate enough of the protrusion from like a Logitech dongle to basically be a non-issue.
Furthermore, the expansion bay is, unlike expansion cards, not constraigned by the height of the machine. You can have the expansion bay stick out the bottom of the laptop. And since it’s a large part of the laptop, it have enough strength to hold up (the laptop), among others. Sort of like the extended battery packs of the old.
A lot of the ideas are repeated in the first few posts of the thread. It would help if somehow a poll can be made (e.g. Microsoft forms), and someone to organize that data into general categories.
Maybe me. But I don’t work for framework. I don’t need to trouble myself with this. It’s cool, but I don’t even own a Framework 16 yet. Still waiting on their Intel versions and/or DDR4 boards.
One does not exclude the other. And you probably don’t even need the pcie switch if bifurcation works right. I also hope that usb4 to pcie chipsets do get a bit cheaper once intel isn’t the only ones making them.
I have internally mounted a torn down unifying receiver in my t480s (stole the smartcard readers internal usb port) but one issue with that is that it doesn’t seem to suspend right and draws like 0.1w constantly no matter what I do (and that is running it at 3.3v instead of 5 which reduced power consumption drastically without any apparent change in functionality). Something like the dual usb-c expansion card but with one external usb-a port and a pocket to build in the guts of a dongle may be a neat idea too.
Yes, I did mention that, and where it would fit and where not (board edge). So recessed port is not applicable here, since there is just no vertical space for that there.
With a big asterisk. Nobody will want to put in a 3D printed shell, so unless the GPU shell is sold seperately at some point, or some other company makes molds, nobody will actually want to use anything but the original thin shell.
Good things there are other materials than PLA XD.
Though for external parts of a laptop it may even be fine, you aren’t suppose to have skin temperatures above 50C anyway. PETG, and most of the HT-PLA blends should be more than fine and are about as easy to print.
I did print a fan diverter for my t480s which is pretty much a worst case scenario since it gets hit by the hot air directly and constantly and wasn’t able to deform the pla version, I printed an abs version anyway but it really wasn’t nessecary.
There is a OCP 3.0 card standard that fits various network cards in servers in a more efficient manner than PCIe cards.
Is anyone interested in turning the Expansion bay into a slot that can accept OCP 3.0 cards?
There is a wide variety of OCP 3.0 cards out there.
Anyone like the idea of 10 or 100Gbps Ethernet to their laptop?
Self explanatory ig, I was thinking maybe instead of an Expansion Bay with just one USB-C port there’s multiple Expansion card slots IN the Bay kinda like a Docking station.
I don’t know a lot about electronics this is just my idea
To be honest, there wasn’t really a provided category that perfectly fit this idea, so I thought that this would be my best bet. Anyway, the idea that I have (this is mostly meant as a recommendation to framework themselves) is this: I noticed that most laptop CPUs are about the size of the Raspberry Pi CM4, so, what if framework made a CPU module daughter board that uses the CM4 pin out to slot right into the mainboard. I apologize if this idea of “I am going to come up with improvement ideas for somebody else’s product!” is kinda stupid. This is my very first post on this site (really my first post on any form of actual social media) and I am still very much a beginner. I am posting this with the hopes that my idea might become reality. I saw that framework was listening to the community for improvement ideas and thought this would be a good one. For those of you who are wondering how this is helpful since you can just replace the whole mainboard to upgrade the CPU, I have an answer. What if one of the other smaller chips blows? Then, you have a perfectly good CPU that is absolutely useless, since the board its soldered to isn’t functional. With a replaceable CPU, you can simply buy a new mainboard, without a CPU, slot everything back together, and have your machine up and running again without having to spend hundreds on a new CPU in addition to the new motherboard.
Essentially, you’re looking for a CPU socket R&D (daughter board or not)…both electrical and mechanical (fastener / latch / clamp). Just think on that for a moment.
“Recommendation” typically means you have the expertise in this area. Is this the case here?
No, I have no expertise here. I did not anticipate that this forum would have that specific of a meaning for “recommendation”. I’m just a guy who is basically throwing out ideas such as but not limited to removable CPU’s in the hopes that I can contribute in some way to making the frame work laptop better for everyone. I am sorry if the way I am posting this is not correct. I am in no way intending to imply that I have any idea of what I am talking about in terms of compatibility and stuff like that. If you have any ideas for a better way I could have worded this, let me know! I would be glad to receive feedback as to anything I could change in future posts. As I said before, there wasn’t really a category of thread I saw that I thought would suite this idea well, so I simply chose this category and by extension wording, hoping that what I said / did wasn’t wrong. Again, I would be happy to read feedback for how I could improve my wording an stuff in future posts. Thanks!
I just thought about it for an extra minute. Were you thinking that when I said “recommendation” I was asking for recommendations as to how I could do this my self? If so, that is not the case. What I meant, was that I was recommending to framework that they could potentially do this, as an alternative to them soldering down the CPU. Again, I thought that this post would best suite this category. If that is not the case, just let me know. Thanks again!
I’ll break up and explain my response:
It’s R&D because in recent years mobile processor from Intel and AMD are no longer socketed…by Intel and AMD. There’s no parts unless someone engineers it.
The thinking for a moment thing: It’ll likely not work for the FL13…as it doesn’t have a internal height to take on a daughter board and socket.
The recommendation part: If you have the experience, that would be perfect for you to share direction / pointers so Framework can potentially get up to speed on this fast if it’s on their product roadmap.
It’s a good idea…one that’s been removed from laptops for the past 8-10 years.