Coral Mini-PCIe compatibility across Mini-PCs

[Ozuck]

Ladies/Gents,

I've been trying a number of mini-pcs for my purpose.

First was this guy, my Coral Mini-PCIe Accelerator (not dual edge) detects and works perfectly. The problem is the J4125 was a bit slow.
Topton Intel 12th Gen Elkhart Lake J6412 Fanless Mini PC Dual Gigabit LAN 2x RS232 4xUSB Windows 11 Linux Industrial Computer - AliExpress

So I bought this with the new N100. It also has a Mini-PCI slot but for some reason wil not detect the Coral. I have two of them, and two different Corals so I'm fairly sure it's not just faulty hardware. I've read some Mini-PCIe slots only have USB pins not PCIe, which makes little sense to me but I'm wondering if anyone can identify the difference between these and why one would work and not the other.
- AliExpress

Cheers

Working


Not Working

 

[alaricljs]

One of the things I ran into while trying to figure out some adapters is that mini PCIe looks an awful lot like M2 E-key which is used for wifi/BT and has a weird combo of USB and x2 PCIe. To make it even more fun ChangWang seems to fudge things even further as on my CW56-58 the mini PCIe slot comes with an adapter which accepts m2 M-key, and has full x4 PCIe connectivity.

 

[Ozuck]

Thanks for chiming in. From my research M.2 E is 12 pins, both my connectors have 8. They're both also advertised from the seller as Mini-PCIe, although that doesn't mean much on Aliexpress.



This is Mini-PCI which aligns with the sockets I have. I just really don't get how there is variance between them and the Coral works on some but not others.

 

[alaricljs]

Just read this today: PCIe For Hackers: An M.2 Card Journey maybe helpful as it specifically mentions Coral and general 'making them work' issues like what you seem to be facing.

 

[unmesh]

Just read this today: PCIe For Hackers: An M.2 Card Journey maybe helpful as it specifically mentions Coral and general 'making them work' issues like what you seem to be facing.

I have a Coral and a spare NVMe slot so this is timely

Thanks

 

[mcfly9]

Just stumbled upon this thread after ordering an A+E key Coral. I have a N100 aliexpress box with two m.2 pcie slots. The specs are a bit vague:

-Support dual storage: 2xM.2 NVMe/PCIe3.0 2280 SSD.
-1xM.2 2230 slot, support WiFi connection, also support transfer to 1xM.2 NVMe/PCIe3.0 2280 SSD with PCB adapter board. (SATA3.0 signal was blocked if M.2 2230 slot was used!)

Looking at the mainboard of the PC, it seems the "wifi" slot is an E key, and the "H-adapter" (making it capable to accept a 2280 SSD) is an M key.

Now I got a bit worried whether I chose the right Coral interface...?

 

[mcfly9]

Got my A+E key Coral today. Plugged in, but have all sorts of weird issues. I have Proxmox 8.1 installed on the PC, and see lspci hang for 20-30 seconds before listing devices.

At the same time I see errors in dmesg about being unable to change power state from D0 to D3hot or D3cold to D0.

With such (seemingly low level) issues, passthrough also doesn't work, the VM is not able to start. Passthrough otherwise works fine, I am already passing through my intel 2.5gb nics to a pfsense VM).

 

[Navy_BOFH]

I started with an A+E key Coral TPU in the WiFi slot of an HP Elitedesk Mini G6 and then a Z2 Mini G5 - both worked with no drama. It might be worth checking if whatever PC you’re using has a whitelist for certain slots/items…