They are. People like to put their multiple Dell bricks to good use.
Like I said, they are effectively a DC-DC switch. It’s a lot more difficult than people would normally anticipate.
The only problem is that a single expansion card is not enough of a structural support to keep the external GPU in place. On laptops with docks you need heavy-duty tabs, aligning pins, hooks (and matching eye-holes) and whatsnot to ensure firm attachment.
My original idea is more of a cable “cast” where the connector plug is shaped like an expansion slot and directly to the main board (instead of through a USB-C passthrough that degrade signals), and help eliminate extra “stuff” beyond the edge of the laptop. The other end then goes to a regular graphics box.
What this idea reminded me of is the old Dell Optical/Floppy “deck”. It’s a dock for their older laptops, and it houses an optical and a floppy drive, as well as maybe some USB, Serial and other ports on the back. Like I mentioned, there are multiple locking points on the bottom of the laptop.
That’s why I meant to slide or snap it onto the base, so there would be no force on the expansion slot. But that was just a thought, as I’m still waiting to hold a Framework laptop in my hand I can’t verify if there would be a way to make this possible.
Pretty much every controller has a plug thicker than a module so making a module to accept one would be little better than the USB adapters that already exist.
Honestly Wacky things i would love to see is a built in battery pack that acts like a bridge-battery like the old thinkpads ( the last being the T480 generation )
It’s a 4-cell vs 6-cell battery.
Weirdly I remember them as being a Dell thing. Although it could be for both
Before Lenovo bought them.
If you make it stout enough (maybe half or 1/3 the depth of the laptop) a 4-port “stand” with … aah.
Fan booster and GPU all in one “performance dock” would be nice.
The connectors on one side could simply be removed and “snap-on” later. And because it’s relatively stout the torque/forces applied to it is not going to be too significant.
Yes and no, I could do it so the power delivery pairs are not attached just VBUS and data, though for USB-C I also need CC pins meaning that it isn’t exactly possible
@Xavier_Jiang
That is on point, GPU on right additional battery on the left, Since the ports are USB4 it should support eGPU and it could be something like and AMD or Nvidia card.
Another thing to consider is instead of having it tapper off as aggressively in you design here you could instead have hollowed out just enough to be able to put in a actual PCI card too.
having been fiddling around with stuff on my desk, I noticed that a mikrotik sfp+ module is a similar length to one of the expansion card boxes. I wonder if it would be possible to get an SFP+ cage into a module. I guess it depends on if the electronics can be fitted into half the width of a module and if the heat would be tolerable.
The height of the base can be increased. It is not going to be too difficult.
The idea of the “aggressive taper off” is because the base need to be as short as possible to limit the amount of torque (potentially, at least) applied to the ports when something inevitably wedges between the base and the laptop, so to keep the base “stout”.
The “incline” is to then ensure that the laptop’s rubber feet (or whatever) can still touch the surface when being docked to.
I need to do another production batch, so I have a couple of expansion cards that I can do. Note that the USB hub doesn’t exactly work the best as a data transfer hub but more for basic devices like a keyboard, mouse or phone. Do not ask me what this thing is, if you don’t know what it is you more than likely do not need it. I’m also going to be selling basic USB2.0 breakout boards that I already have stock of but just waiting for my reel of 5.1k ohm resistors.
