This board was designed by WifiCable and assembled by us, I'm selling these boards so that everyone can get them, with her permission!

Do you have a Dell Latitude laptop from about 2011-2013? Good news - there's an extra PCIe link inside the optical disk drive bay, and my friend has built an adapter that lets you tap into this link, as well as add an extra SSD to your laptop! This adapter gives you PCIe link access on a standardized USB3 socket, and a M.2 SATA SSD slot next to it - plus, a bunch of testpoints for your own experiments, with all the signals you could want! If you've got one of these trusty Dells, perhaps you're even relying on it for work, or maybe you have been looking for an excuse to tinker with PCIe - this adapter is made exactly for you.

Do you not have a supported Dell laptop? Worry not, for this adapter works as a general-purpose slimine (ODD) SATA to M.2 SATA SSD adapter! With such an adapter, you can add a M.2 SATA SSD to any laptop of yours equipped with an optical drive, be it a Dell, Asus, Lenovo, HP, or any other manufacturer.

For PCIe, the USB3 socket uses the same pinout that the omnipresent 1x PCIe risers use - you won't have problems looking for compatible hardware! The pinout for M.2 SATA SSDs is standardized too, so you can actually use this adapter with any laptop of yours with a SATA optical drive slot, if you just want to add an extra M.2 SATA SSD.

The adapter exposes every single pin you could want - a few of them have pulldowns; however, if you wanted to wire up switches for power saving or PCIe link toggling, you absolutely can! The PCB is 4-layer internally, with matched impedance for both PCIe and SATA signals, ensuring signal integrity. There are two LEDs - one for 3.3V power regulator, and another for drive activity. The LEDs are random colors - as a surprise!

Fastening the adapter inside the bay is currently up to you, but we've made it easier. You can use hot glue, or 3D print a tray that'd also hold a PCIe cable in - whichever works for you! We picked the SSD slot such that the SSD doesn't need to be held at an angle - you insert the SSD in parallel with the PCB, from the side, and it just works. That said, if you could use an extra fixture to hold the SSD in, message me and let us know, we can likely include a lasercut adapter for you!

We've successfully tested it with Dell E6420, and it should work with the following models:

Dell Latitude:

• E6320
• E6330
• E6430s
• E6420
• E6430
• E6440
• E6520
• E6530
• E6540

Dell Precision:

• M2800

This adapter is fully open-source! See the design files at a link down below.