17 ms·

Cursed Adapters

375 points by dsr_ 7y ago

jolmg 7y ago
> have you ever thought that the real problem was that the front and back of your computer are backwards? I do, actually! I thought I was alone in that. I have my PC with the back facing the front. I actually flipped it to stop it from overheating from having the vents be against the walls, but I really like the easy access to the ports. It also makes opening the side panel easier, since they tend to be made to slide towards the back.
- recursive 7y ago
  You seem like you understand how to read twitter. Can you help me out? I don't see the quote you provided anywhere on the linked page. What I see is this. > so I was looking for a MicroSD to M.2 adapter (shut up, it exists, and I have reasons to want it) and I found something way more cursed: M.2 (SDIO) to SD card slot! It sounds like a reply to something, but I can't tell what, and then below it are a bunch of replies, none of which seem to be related to each other. I think I have a twitter learning disability.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Yeah, I don't understand the structure that well either, but those below don't seem to be replies. To see the actual replies, hit "Show this thread" or "See replies" below the image.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html
  - reportgunner 7y ago
    This is what I see when I click the link [0], the text is right there. What do you see when you open the link ? (no sarcasm or offence intended) 0: https://imgur.com/a/CkrGGDR https://imgur.com/a/CkrGGDR
    - recursive 7y ago
      That is what I see also. But the text "have you ever thought that [...]" is not there. I later found out that you can click "Show this thread" to see it. But don't confuse it with "← Thread", since that will show you a bunch of Trump and celebrity stuff.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  > the real problem was that the front and back of your computer are backward If this is truly a source of friction, why bother with the case? Why not go au naturale?
  - frostburg 7y ago
    Dust, noise, thermal and electrical danger.
    - jolmg 7y ago
      Lack of horizontal realstate, inability to drill and screw it into the wall (it's not my wall).
      - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        Well there's only one solution, then;) http://i.imgur.com/rnEHOTD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/rnEHOTD.jpg ...oh, it's not your ceiling, either? Well then I'm out of ideas:)
        andrewflnr 7y ago
        That was... less glorious than I was hoping for. I think a PC built as a mobile would be pretty cool.
        solstice 7y ago
        Perfect to reduce vibration and other sounds for podcasting
        jolmg 7y ago
        That's a huge tower of a heatsink. The motherboard seems to be bending from the weight of it. Am I seeing 2 fans attached to the sides of the heatsink?
- frostburg 7y ago
  I use a FT05 case for one of my desktops; besides being excellent thermally, having the motherboard rotated 90° with the rear i/o facing upwards is nice (also no gpu sag).
  - CarVac 7y ago
    I built a custom case with a rotated motherboard like this, with a huge furnace filter on the intake and 8 fans (well in excess of what's needed for cooling) to clean my room air.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      People like you are why hackers/engineers have a reputation. Bravo:)
    - solstice 7y ago
      Pics please
      - CarVac 7y ago
        Very old photos; I've replaced all the hardware you see except the SSD, wi-fi card, and the power supply. https://imgur.com/a/u1Ti7 https://imgur.com/a/u1Ti7
        solstice 7y ago
        Very cool, thank you! How's the noise after you switched the fans?
        CarVac 7y ago
        I switched first to Gentle Typhoons, then the new Noctua NF-A12×25. The cheap-o original fans were quiet at low speed but hardly moved any air, and at high speed they made tons of wind noise; I think the airfoils were stalling or something. The Gentle Typhoons were reasonably wind-noise quiet even at high speed, but made a high-pitched hissing from the bearings at all speeds, and a groaning rumble from the motors at low speed. The Noctuas are much quieter at 1000 rpm, almost inaudible relative to the 4 hard drives, and make fairly innocuous white noise at high speed.
- lpghatguy 7y ago
  Does that mean your power button is facing the wall?
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Yup, but it's OK. I hardly ever use it.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Set the computer to start on a keyboard press. I lived for years with a desktop with a broken power button. Didn't miss it.
    - Hello71 7y ago
      unfortunately, that wastes a good deal of power in the modern age of USB keyboards...
      - eropple 7y ago
        How many watts does your USB keyboard draw?
        LeonidasXIV 7y ago
        Depends how many devices are plugged into it via the soldered on USB to m.2 adapter, obviously.
        Hello71 7y ago
        none, but the USB controller is expensive
    - mariuolo 7y ago
      > I lived for years with a desktop with a broken power button. Why couldn't you replace it?
      - rfrey 7y ago
- egdod 7y ago
  I used to have a case that had stuff reversed this way. The cables came out at the front, and a cover could close over them to make it not look ratty. I think it was made by Lian Li.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  This is a semi common issue with VR. There are products available that extend the displayport and usb connections to the front of the case.
- woliveirajr 7y ago
  Never thought that the solution to my problem of "this cable is 4 inches shorter than it should" would be just making my computer face the wall and never minding about the power button. I'm sure I'll be able to just drill and put another power button on the top of it... And CDs and DVDs? Don't remember last time I used some. Thanks HN!!!
  - mcpherrinm 7y ago
    There's another adapter you can get to solve the power button issue! There are PCI slot brackets with power and reset buttons. https://www.highspeedpc.com/ATX_Power_Bracket_p/atxbracket.htm https://www.highspeedpc.com/ATX_Power_Bracket_p/atxbracket.h...
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      What is that supposed to be for? I only see > Also great for isolating problem case switches! ... Which implies that that's not the primary use they envisioned.
      - JonathonW 7y ago
        Exactly what it says in the first line: motherboard power control without a case. Their main product appears to be an open-air ATX "case", which basically amounts to a motherboard mount, a fan mount, a rail to support PCI cards, and a mount point or two for hard drives, without side walls and without a power button. So they also sell a power button mounted onto a PCI bracket, to slot into an open slot on the case's PCI rail.
        AstralStorm 7y ago
        That thing is called a test bench.
      - he_is_legend 7y ago
        I have one. I have a PC tower case with extra cages for holding hard disks - 4 cages with 4 drives each fill the front of the case. However that meant moving the slot where the power switch and front USB connectors were. I didn't need the front USB headers, and I also didn't want to cut a hole in the case, so moving the power switch to a empty PCI bracket in the back was the perfect option.
- Swizec 7y ago
  Huh? My computer had important (usb) ports on the front top of the case as early as 2005. Do they not make PC towers like that anymore?
  - jolmg 7y ago
    They do, but some people may want more USB ports, some an ethernet port, some a DisplayPort display port[1]. A keyboard and mouse is something you'd typically connect to the back, but I can see some people liking the ability to conveniently reconnect them to a laptop. Of course, you can buy a USB hub, you can buy a USB ethernet NIC (though it still probably won't go as fast as the back one), but you can also just flip the box. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429795
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  See, I totally agree with your reasoning, and I would do that with my computer, except... ...the back of my computer is ugly. It matters! My computer is a pretty large fixture in my apartment, and I want my home to look nice.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    > ...the back of my computer is ugly. https://www.homedepot.com/s/Spray%2520paint?searchtype=text&NCNI-5 https://www.homedepot.com/s/Spray%2520paint?searchtype=text&...
  - reportgunner 7y ago
    You could hide the computer behind a painting.
- tfehring 7y ago
  Sounds like a good idea in theory, but then you need to reach all the way to the back to access the PCIe card mounted in your optical drive bay.
- klyrs 7y ago
  Hahaha do you remember when humans used to put data in through the front of the computer?
- lazylizard 7y ago
  Some boards have power n reset buttons at the back too.
- myself248 7y ago
  Yeeeeeeeeeeeears ago, a company called Cyber Research made a "backwards PC case" with both the slots and drive bays facing the same side. They used to advertise in PC Computing and Byte and stuff, if I recall correctly. If I had a bunch of time I could probably find 'em on Archive.org or something. Their logo was very distinctive, a 3d-head sort of thing which I remember resembling the middle of the "little brain / big brain / universe brain" meme.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    https://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/reversed-pc-chassis-makes-cabling-easier-5831 https://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/reversed-pc-chassis-mak...
- graphitezepp 7y ago
  Someone once wanted to play a music CD on my computer. You seriously think I bothered to buy a CD reader for this thing?
loudandskittish 7y ago
Unrelated, but is there a reason I now suddenly have to click "Show Thread" every time someone links to a Twitter thread now?
- bepvte 7y ago
  No, but there are several "thread unroller" sites to make reading these things easier.
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    Does anyone have a link to those pages that turn twitter threads in to normal blog posts?
    - tastroder 7y ago
      https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html should work
  - wp381640 7y ago
    The existence of those apps and their popularity should be a large hint to twitter that their UI is broken
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dmitshur 7y ago
Meanwhile, all I want is a simple high-DPI gaming mouse with a USB-C (rather than USB-A) connector, and it still doesn’t exist in 2020.
- heelix 7y ago
  Not sure about high performance mice, but Amazon does have some USB-C mice. I picked up for my daughter to play Stardew Valley on her mac. Was looking to avoid the daisy chain of adapters rather than a high sampling rate. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BMLJBJ8/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BMLJBJ8/
  - dhosek 7y ago
    Who uses non-Bluetooth mice now?
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      People who enjoy latency free and battery free mice. If its at a desktop there is really no reason to not use a wired mouse. And a wired keyboard is basically essential since bluetooth doesn't work before the OS has booted.
      - emptysea 7y ago
        Not super scientific but Linus Tech Tips has a video comparing the latency of wired and wireless mice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8 TL;DR: wireless and wired gaming mice have the same response times, but normal wireless office mice have slower response times than their gaming counterparts.
        NamTaf 7y ago
        My biggest issue with wireless office mice is that if the laptop de-prioritises bluetooth interrupts due to CPU load or whatever, then you get this really laggy response. I'm not entirely sure exactly what's going on, but if I open something heavy on my work laptop the mouse will have a 0.5-1 second delay in responding. This doesn't affect the touchpad, which I presume is running over a different protocol that has more real-time interrupts.
jedberg 7y ago
This gave me flashbacks. In the 90s I had to work with a lot of strange hardware. They all had "standard" interfaces, but they weren't really standard at all. Sometimes to connect my laptop to a device required a series of three or four adapters. We also had kits in the office to make your own serial adapters, where you had to figure out the pinouts on each side and then build the adapter one pin at a time.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  This is now usb-c. Its a standard plug that supports somewhere between everything and just usb 2.0
  - thedance 7y ago
    Sure, if what you mean by standard is it physically fits together but you can’t tell what the heck it’s doing.
  - phh 7y ago
    Nope. The usb-c on rPi doesn't do usb 2.0. I think that when plugging an usb-c into an usb-c, we can assume it won't explode, but that's pretty much it. And I wouldn't totally bet on it.
    - p_l 7y ago
      Had seen too many burned out MBP usb-c ports to believe that nothing will explode...
    - nfriedly 7y ago
      The Pi4 actually does support USB 2.0 over the Type-C port, it just needed a software update to enable it. See https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gadget/ https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gad...
- protomyth 7y ago
  We got into the habit of ordering a bunch of different adapters every time a new standard presented itself. New FireWire 800? Order adaptors for going to FW400 and Sony's odd duck version. New flash card? Order adapters including to some weird things (I'm sensing a pattern Sony). Seems wasteful but it has saved our bacon quite a few times.
asveikau 7y ago
I kinda want something with a lot of microSD slots and it exposes each one as a separate disk. Then I could run a zfs pool on spare/discarded SD cards around the house. The closest thing I found was something claiming to do something like SD slot raid-0. But the board does all the work, and raid-0 is terrible. And the whole point for me is that SD cards have terrible failure rates, so I figure zfs adds redundancy.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- orev 7y ago
  A company made one of these a while ago, and it was awful. Linus Tech Tips has a video on it. The market is just too small and there are so many better options that it’s not worthwhile to make.
  - bradknowles 7y ago
    But you could make a Beowulf cluster out of those! Will no one ever think of all the wolves? ;)
  - floatboth 7y ago
    No, that one doesn't expose them as separate disks, that one is hardware raid 0
    - orev 7y ago
      The overarching point is the same. The utility of such a device is so small and has such a small potential audience that no one would make one (at least with any reasonable quality). If you really want it, get a USB hub and full each port with an SD card reader.
      - asveikau 7y ago
        I think you described the raid-0 device I was describing. Whoever came up with the idea for that device, I can say with confidence, does not understand the failure rate of SD cards and the mathematics of why raid-0 is a bad idea. You are right though in this "overarching" point that it is very niche and you can probably have a decent solution with USB. I would think that might get a little more clumsy and consume more power than a single board exposing all slots though.
ranger207 7y ago
A lot of these seem pretty useful in certain circumstances. A lot of the "[whatever] to USB header" ones could be used for the boot drive so you can use all of your drive bays for data. I've seen servers with internal USB and SD ports for exactly that purpose, but if you don't have one, these could be useful.
- notatoad 7y ago
  I agree, a lot of them do seem useful, but I do admit that the situations where I might have found them useful were situations where I was doing dumb stuff.
bathtub365 7y ago
My favourite cursed adapter is the Etherkiller, a mains plug connected to an ethernet cable: https://i.imgur.com/oQBaNQL.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oQBaNQL.jpg
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Sounds like a Power over Ethernet thing?
  - NamTaf 7y ago
    It's PoE, I guess, if you treat any concept of standards compliance with dismissive disdain to the point of intentional malice.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- bamf 7y ago
  That’s a CAT-o-5-tails
undersuit 7y ago
So there's mini PCI-E and there's mini PCI-E(SATA). The SATA one is just directly connected to a SATA controller, when you look for storage devices for the mini PCI-E format that's all you find thanks to it's prolific use in laptops. The other mini PCI-E is just a 1x PCI-E channel... or a USB connection, when you look for items to connect to mini PCI-E you find Wifi and 3g/4g cards and something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJ45JXD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJ45JXD. Now one day in my searches I did find some Intel Flash drives that were used for ReadyBoost duties on some Windows laptops, but they lack a flash controller and you need a special Linux kernel module to even use it which breaks my want to boot from the mini PCI-E device. Since the industry went the m.2 route the mini PCI-E slot is dead and dying. You can even get m.2 adapters for Wifi(https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-ax200h-m-2/p/0XM-00JK-00063 https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-ax200h-m-2/p/0XM-00JK-00063) or FPGA(https://numato.com/product/aller-artix-7-m-2-fpga-module https://numato.com/product/aller-artix-7-m-2-fpga-module) because it's more universal than a standard PCI-E slot now. This ramble is to nominate mini PCI-E as a cursed connector.
sandinmyjoints 7y ago
I misread this as Cursed Adopters, and thought it was going to be about users who, when they use a technology, seem to encounter more trouble than the average user--a kind of inverse of early adopters.
peterburkimsher 7y ago
I use an SD female to microSD male, plugged into a PQI Air Card (which can use Dmitry's hacked Transcend firmware to run Ubuntu), inside an iPod. Some of these adaptors are useful for geeks like me! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819
- captn3m0 7y ago
  The photos on the thread are down. Could you re-up them?
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    Sorry about that! I'd run out of space on my Google Drive, so I deleted some files last week. I've reuploaded the photos to Mega. https://mega.nz/#F!75cTSYwZ!d5VYSECvYXXbd_yLCvwPsw https://mega.nz/#F!75cTSYwZ!d5VYSECvYXXbd_yLCvwPsw
    - peterburkimsher 7y ago
      https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/albums/72157713343408792 https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/albums/721577133...
marcosdumay 7y ago
Well... Header adapters are not meant for PCs, they are there for specialized boards. There are plenty of those. That USB to ISA adapter, why would anybody buy the reverse nowadays? There aren't many computers with an ISA bus, but there are plenty of old specialized ISA boards that would cost a fortune to replace. About that DDR4 extender, I have a computer where the processor cooler inutilized a memory slot (stupid motherboard designers?). I just left it empty, but could have used one of those too. And... Ethernet into M.2 is plenty of interesting. I wonder how useful can it be.
- numpad0 7y ago
  I’ve read somewhere that manufacturers use extenders as replaceable receptacles for testing. The slots are rated for so many insertion/removal cycles so you’d want them replaceable.
  - rasz 7y ago
    That is precisely what the sodimm slot is for. Most service centers use those for memtesting.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  The DDR4 extender takes up the same place the memory would, and more. I don't understand what obstruction would be solved by this.
  - LeonidasXIV 7y ago
    I thought the same at first but some memory ("gaming memory") might have pretty extensive heatsinks that make it wider than just this adapter PCB. So yeah, you don't win much but sometimes a few millimeters make the difference between fitting things in or not.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      It gives you a profile that's very slightly thinner at the bottom, but I've never seen a cooler that spills past the CPU where the bottom inch is wider than the second-most-bottom inch.
jerrysievert 7y ago
I've had several DOM (disk on module) devices over the years, but I think that the one that I loved the most was the SIMM to DIMM adapter, which adapted multiple SIMM instances to a single DIMM slot when the transition occurred. beautiful piece of tech for the time.
- rasz 7y ago
  Never seen anything like that :o Plenty of 4x30 pin to 1x72pin adapters tho, both front and back facing so you can run a pair together.
serf 7y ago
PCI PS/2 adapters were quite common when they were needed, just like PCI USB adapters a few years later. I don't know if i'd call them cursed.
joshu 7y ago
downthread there's a USB-ISA adapter (lets you use ISA boards via a USB port) and that was so odd I chipped in actual money to see it happen
- raverbashing 7y ago
  This is the really cursed one And of course you'll still have to fiddle with the IRQs on the boards you plug and have a USB to ISA bridge(?) driver and I can't imagine how to make an ISA driver talk to a virtual bus over USB Suffice to say if it was the other way around I think ISA wasn't fast enough for USB 2.0 so at least there's that
  - rasz 7y ago
    The one ISA-on-USB I saw some years ago came with SDK and you had to write your custom software for it, no transparent automagic isa mapping on PC.
- avian 7y ago
  I have a box of custom ISA data acquisition boards sitting around somewhere, mostly because I never came around to throwing them out. I actually wrote a Linux driver for them some lifetimes ago. This USB thing might actually make them useful again. I never thought an adapter like this might exist.
- rasz 7y ago
  Ancient (~2000) Orinoco USB dongles https://wiki.debian.org/orinoco_usb https://wiki.debian.org/orinoco_usb , Proxim/Lucent/Agere Prism chipset = original Apple pcmcia AirPort Card = first wifi 802.11b cards ever, shipped in USB-2-PCMCIA cradle build using Cypress EZ-USB bridge chip https://www.cypress.com/products/ez-usb-fx1 https://www.cypress.com/products/ez-usb-fx1 . PCMCIA is ~16bit ISA
asdkljas 7y ago
made my day. Ima gonna archive all of them to my evernote collection in case I do need one of them!
markchristian 7y ago
I really wish Foone had a blog.
- jachee 7y ago
  He does. It's just a long series of looooooong twitter threads. ;) I knew this was going to be a foone thread before I saw that it linked to twitter. :)
- fanf2 7y ago
  https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128 https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128
pintxo 7y ago
Cannot help myself, but am reminded of the famous electric to water adapter: https://etel-tuning.eu/werkzeug-zubehor/183-adapter-drehstrom-auf-gardena.html https://etel-tuning.eu/werkzeug-zubehor/183-adapter-drehstro...
- ragebol 7y ago
  Hey, I was going to post that! Not sure what I'll get when I actually (try to) order one of those contraptions.
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  I can't read German, so I can only assume that's a joke... What the heck is going on there?
  - avian 7y ago
    It’s a joke. For some reason people like making these fake Gardena adapters. Here’s a water-to-HDMI one: https://imgur.com/FHSFM9o https://imgur.com/FHSFM9o
  - Kinrany 7y ago
    There's an international version: https://etel-tuning.com/ https://etel-tuning.com/
- gitgud 7y ago
  That site is hilarious, after browsing for 10 mins I realised there wasn't a single serious product haha
- chaoticmass 7y ago
  I made this fake cable website[1] years ago that let you find all kinds of silly and impossible cables. There's a funny story about how I got Google Product search to implement a policy that all products submitted to their database had to actually exist. [1] http://cabledimension.com/ http://cabledimension.com/
PascLeRasc 7y ago
I went through a real cursed search last summer trying to find a series of adapters to connect an Apple Cinema Display, which only has an attached mini-DisplayPort male cable, to a standard PC with only HDMI and DVI. Female mDP to male DP exists, but there's no way forward from there to convert male DP to male HDMI/DVI. I stumbled across female-DP to female-DP, which I thought was my holy grail until it couldn't power on the display. I learned about the difference between active and passive DisplayPort that day. Eventually I just bought a different GPU that had mini-Displayport.
- nixpulvis 7y ago
  Just try connecting a modern Mac to FireWire 400... You gotta go: FireWire 400 -> FireWire 800 -> Thunderbolt 2 -> Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C). Madness.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - bzzzt 7y ago
    Seems like Apple has 'deprecated' the Firewire stack in macOS. Catalina works, but don't count on it being available much longer. Btw, the FW->Thunderbolt conversion adds a noticeable amount of latency to my audio interface :(
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      What's still out there to use FireWire on?
    - rasz 7y ago
      At least it doesnt outright drop packets like the USB audio on modern macs.
- fanf2 7y ago
  DisplayPort and HDMI have very different protocols: HDMI (like DVI) has three separate physical channels, one for each colour, whereas DisplayPort sends whole pixels down a single logical channel. DisplayPort outputs can switch to HDMI mode to support passive DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters, but HDMI outputs cannot support DisplayPort screens.
exabrial 7y ago
Missed a realy useful one: Apple SSD to M2.
vxNsr 7y ago
> And here's another one that's weirder and weirder the longer you look at it. So it's a 5.25" bay mounted hard drive, but it's a RAM disk. Now a RAM disk is when you use some RAM like a disk, but this isn't on the motherboard, so... how is it RAM? how does it connect? see when they call this a RAM disk, they really mean it on the "DISK" part. It's SATA! It's a SATA drive you use like any other drive, it's just fast as hell because it's backed by RAM! but doesn't RAM lose its contents when turned off? YEP! that's why it has that big honking battery there, it keeps the RAM active when the PC is turned off. I wonder how long that battery lasts for, also I guess wiping your data is easy... just unplug the battery, no way anyones gonna get at your data then.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  These things were excellent back when flash had poor density and mediocre speeds; the cost per MB was similar when fully populated and it was significantly faster.
  - sebazzz 7y ago
    Unfortunately SATA is the limiting factor. However, they would be awesome on the PCIe bus.
  - vxNsr 7y ago
    They were actually used? by who?
    - p_l 7y ago
      Caches, scratch drives for compilation or whatever other disk intensive process you had, etc. Heavy industrial models were the ancestors of today's all-flash SAN arrays, later common in hybrid ram+flash. RAMsan was one of the major vendors.
      - elFarto 7y ago
        CCP used one for Eve Online. They stuck their SQL server on it.
hatsunearu 7y ago
SDIO? I have no idea how this works. Does the M.2 SSD have some sort of fallback mode to talk over SDIO or does it emulate an SD card interface? If it's the former is there an SDIO driver for M.2 SSDs? Lol
ohmyblock 7y ago
Few years ago I replaced my Ipod's broken hard drive with a compactflash card using a strange adapter, it works great.
basicplus2 7y ago
Everything should have an adapter to connect back to RS232
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Reminds me of some PS4 or Xbox (I think) reverse engineering video where they they tunneled PCI-E over RS232 (around 8m15s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA
lvturner 7y ago
Is it just me, or are none of the images loading on twitter? Edit: they loaded in the end, it was just very slow
walrus01 7y ago
Probably 80% of those are hack solutions intended to prolong the service life of weird embedded/industrial x86 systems. If you go far enough down the rabbit hole of weird embedded system component makers, and system integrators (mostly Taiwan based) you'll find all sorts of weird stuff. The sort of pieces you'd use to build a x86 system running a complicated thing in a factory or industrial process, or a kiosk... Armored stainless steel keyboards, fanless systems with big heatsinks built into the chassis, and so forth.
- sneak 7y ago
  If you dig through the twitter history of the account linked to (one of the best on twitter, I might add) you will find many examples of exactly this type of industrial hardware.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  From the thread: > although if you really want to live the Real Life, you might want to consider... m.2 CANBUS! > Have you ever wanted to interface with the network running your car from an m.2 slot? if so, go to jail. but not before buying this! CAN bus is used everywhere in industrial and embedded systems, not just cars. Lots of PLCs, servo cards, networked sensors use it, you need low latency to get the task done, and you usually prefer a small-form-factor fanless DIN-rail mount PC in a control cabinet, so full-size PCIe cards or USB adapters are no-go. M.2 it is! Likewise with the industrial USB-C and waterproof HDMI down thread; positive locking connectors don't usually go with modern touchscreens. I think you'd see a lot of these connectors and adapters if you worked maintenance in (or just got a tour through) a local manufacturing facility.
- sleepybrett 7y ago
  I've got a weird SCSI to sdcard interface, I think it was initially developed for an 80s era sampler (sampling for music). But it works great in my Macintosh SE/30.
uk_programmer 7y ago
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220346988949504/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220346988949504/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220403821764608 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220403821764608 These sort of adapters are used a lot by people like myself who muck around with retro hardware. No need to rely on hardrives that are 20-30 years old. Just plug in an adapter in and then swap out SD / CF cards. There are even CF to ISA card adapters that you can buy in kit form: https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/tag/xt-ide/ https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/tag/xt-ide/ However the market is obviously very niche.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Exactly that, I don't have a link but SCSI adapters to SD card's are used by many retro hardware people and they love them for that. I don't have a link to the device but a review of one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1mu7TPtE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1mu7TPtE8
  - uk_programmer 7y ago
    I watch that guys channel from time to time. A lot of this stuff is easier thanks to forums and Youtube tbh.
- himinlomax 7y ago
  Keep in mind that the market for "retro hardware" is not limited to amateur tech archæologists. It also and probably mostly includes users of industrial equipment. Their useful lifetime can span decades even if the computers controlling them are beyond obsolete long before that, and replacing them can be nearly impossible or not economically viable.
- buildsjets 7y ago
  I have one and use it. Want to add an SSD to your Apple ][? Boom. https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/reactivemicro-driveturbo-for-iie-and-iigs/ https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/reactivemicro-drivetur...
jfim 7y ago
The SIM card one is actually used by SIM card developers, I've had a few of those on my desk in a previous life. Basically, when developing applets for SIM cards, it's a lot easier to deal with plugging in a full sized SIM card in a large slot than dealing with a tiny modern size SIM card, especially when dealing with multiple handsets. The testing process with a handset is simply to write the applet on the card using a full sized smart card reader, then take the card, put it in the handset and boot it. With the adapter, the steps of putting the card in the handset and taking it out are much easier, since there's no need to move a tiny card and extract it using a tool.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Yes, the aspect that you need to test things on many mobile networks does become easier when you can easily switch the SIM - that alone makes it kinda essential - unless you have multiple devices for each network and there are a lot - more so if you factor in roaming. That and nobody ever advertises how many times you can swap a sim and the socket pins won't break. Kinda makes you wonder how many times you can swap a sim before the socket suffers failure of some form, from wear and tear. I've certainly had a fair few break over my lifetime and that's from light usage. Though getting full sized sim cards is becoming harder these days I have noticed - even the precut multi sim that you push out the sim for the size and the aspect that the last phone I saw that would take a full sized (credit card sized) sim form factor was two decades ago.
  - jfim 7y ago
    The ISO/IEC 7816 interfaces can pretty sturdy (eg. for ATMs), but for phones, I'd wager that most phones don't ever change the SIM card more than once or twice; phone manufacturers probably cut costs there.
- exikyut 7y ago
  Speaking solely from a position of outside naive curiosity, how does SIM card applet development work, why/where is custom development needed, and what sort of security considerations (are|need to be) taken into account? For example, I can settle doctor's appointments etc with what looks like a perfectly ordinary card terminal; I swipe my healthcare card and after a long sequence of button-presses by the (very patient) receptionist I get a receipt with the Medicare logo etc on it (this is in Australia). I've always wondered if all the logic to do this is hiding in the SIM card or if the card terminal is also running specialized firmware. The only bit of related anecdata I can remember was... wait, I don't believe it but I found it, probably one of the more interesting bits of applet development out there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140208 (the entire thread is a bit of a rabbithole too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328)
rwmj 7y ago
I really could have used a SD-card to USB headers adapter back when I was trying to put a bigger boot drive inside my QNAP NAS. It has a USB header on the motherboard which normally has only 512M of storage on it, which is rather too small for a normal Linux distro. I ended up with a USB key hanging out of one of the USB ports at the back which is way less elegant.
ginko 7y ago
I only see one adapter (M2 to SD) and some random tech tweets. Am I missing something here?
- edvinasbartkus 7y ago
  Click on "Show thread"
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tenant 7y ago
Twitter is such a shitty website to have to look at anything on that's bigger than a tweet.
- gambiting 7y ago
  Yeah, I saw one message a picture and went "that's it??", But then discovered it has a view thread button and there's more hiding there. Such a bizzaire UI experience.
  - MrRadar 7y ago
    I really hate that new "feature" too. I don't get why anyone would want it. Edit: I think I figured it out. I think it's supposed to make it easier to see replies to the linked/original tweet which you would otherwise have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to see. The problem is that they implemented it backwards. It should show the thread by default and give you an option to see the non-thread replies to the current tweet instead.
floatboth 7y ago
> I'LL TELL YOU WHY NOT 4 MICROSD CARDS: > BECAUSE YOU COULD FIT A FUCK TON MORE ON THERE! LTT did a video with this product a couple years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frnBoqqI_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frnBoqqI_Q
yummypaint 7y ago
Looking forward to the fake m.2 drives on amazon and ebay built with this
scoutt 7y ago
Why the negativity? Why the "OH FUCK YOU - FUCK YOU, IT EXISTS (author words)" tone when there are entire markets/areas where retro-compatibility and weird conversions are a requirement? I know that an average user won't buy many of these adapters, but for a person doing that kind of research, is it really that weird? I mean, the author is a "Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators." We're retrofitting 18K devices with SSDs through a M2-to-USB converter (we have reasons to do it that way). Someone is selling my company 18K of those boards. So, not bad at all. And that's just us.
- miloignis 7y ago
  I don't believe they're actually angry or negative that it exists! It's an expression of surprise, using hyperbole to communicate in a funny way how bizarre it is without context. Foone is an old and weird hardware enthusiast, they love this sort of stuff. Edit: I mean they love old and weird hardware, not that they themselves are old and weird.
  - codeisawesome 7y ago
    I definitely interpreted it as the latter so thanks for clarifying with that edit :’D
    - asveikau 7y ago
      Of course there is nothing wrong with a person being old or weird, either.
- krilly 7y ago
  This isn't even a strange adapter, I'd be surprised if this didn't exist. Why not get excited about cassette tape to 3.5mm adapters (very real and also very useful)?
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    Why not get excited about cassette tape to 3.5mm adapters (very real and also very useful)? I use one of these nearly every day, since my truck doesn't have an aux-in jack, but it did come with a factory cassette tape player.
walrus01 7y ago
> have you ever thought that the real problem was that the front and back of your computer are backwards? This is a real market for telecom stuff, and one of the reasons shallow depth 1U and 2U servers with all of their connections on the front panel exist. Including power, whether ac or DC, network, indicator lights, and all the common ports found on an atx motherboard.
Noxmiles 7y ago
I really love the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT, connected to all GPIO Pins, with seperate USB cable! :D
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
robotnikman 7y ago
I actually used the microSD to SD adapter before in my old Galaxy Note 3. Since the Note 3 had a removable back which you could use to access the both the battery and microSD card slot unlike most phones today, I replaced it with one normally used with a Zerolemon extended battery, and used it with a 512GB SD card since microSD cards did not come in sizes that large at the time.
ChrisArchitect 7y ago
just noticed this is a thread from Feb 3. Not that it's not interesting, but was wondering I couldn't find it in foone's recent stream. (an HN re-submit I take it)

375 points by dsr_ 7y ago

> have you ever thought that the real problem was that the front and back of your computer are backwards? I do, actually! I thought I was alone in that. I have my PC with the back facing the front. I actually flipped it to stop it from overheating from having the vents be against the walls, but I really like the easy access to the ports. It also makes opening the side panel easier, since they tend to be made to slide towards the back.

recursive 7y ago
You seem like you understand how to read twitter. Can you help me out? I don't see the quote you provided anywhere on the linked page. What I see is this. > so I was looking for a MicroSD to M.2 adapter (shut up, it exists, and I have reasons to want it) and I found something way more cursed: M.2 (SDIO) to SD card slot! It sounds like a reply to something, but I can't tell what, and then below it are a bunch of replies, none of which seem to be related to each other. I think I have a twitter learning disability.
- jolmg 7y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand the structure that well either, but those below don't seem to be replies. To see the actual replies, hit "Show this thread" or "See replies" below the image.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html
- reportgunner 7y ago
  This is what I see when I click the link [0], the text is right there. What do you see when you open the link ? (no sarcasm or offence intended) 0: https://imgur.com/a/CkrGGDR https://imgur.com/a/CkrGGDR
  - recursive 7y ago
    That is what I see also. But the text "have you ever thought that [...]" is not there. I later found out that you can click "Show this thread" to see it. But don't confuse it with "← Thread", since that will show you a bunch of Trump and celebrity stuff.
smitty1e 7y ago
> the real problem was that the front and back of your computer are backward If this is truly a source of friction, why bother with the case? Why not go au naturale?
- frostburg 7y ago
  Dust, noise, thermal and electrical danger.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Lack of horizontal realstate, inability to drill and screw it into the wall (it's not my wall).
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      Well there's only one solution, then;) http://i.imgur.com/rnEHOTD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/rnEHOTD.jpg ...oh, it's not your ceiling, either? Well then I'm out of ideas:)
      - andrewflnr 7y ago
        That was... less glorious than I was hoping for. I think a PC built as a mobile would be pretty cool.
      - solstice 7y ago
        Perfect to reduce vibration and other sounds for podcasting
      - jolmg 7y ago
        That's a huge tower of a heatsink. The motherboard seems to be bending from the weight of it. Am I seeing 2 fans attached to the sides of the heatsink?
frostburg 7y ago
I use a FT05 case for one of my desktops; besides being excellent thermally, having the motherboard rotated 90° with the rear i/o facing upwards is nice (also no gpu sag).
- CarVac 7y ago
  I built a custom case with a rotated motherboard like this, with a huge furnace filter on the intake and 8 fans (well in excess of what's needed for cooling) to clean my room air.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    People like you are why hackers/engineers have a reputation. Bravo:)
  - solstice 7y ago
    Pics please
    - CarVac 7y ago
      Very old photos; I've replaced all the hardware you see except the SSD, wi-fi card, and the power supply. https://imgur.com/a/u1Ti7 https://imgur.com/a/u1Ti7
      - solstice 7y ago
        Very cool, thank you! How's the noise after you switched the fans?
        CarVac 7y ago
        I switched first to Gentle Typhoons, then the new Noctua NF-A12×25. The cheap-o original fans were quiet at low speed but hardly moved any air, and at high speed they made tons of wind noise; I think the airfoils were stalling or something. The Gentle Typhoons were reasonably wind-noise quiet even at high speed, but made a high-pitched hissing from the bearings at all speeds, and a groaning rumble from the motors at low speed. The Noctuas are much quieter at 1000 rpm, almost inaudible relative to the 4 hard drives, and make fairly innocuous white noise at high speed.
lpghatguy 7y ago
Does that mean your power button is facing the wall?
- jolmg 7y ago
  Yup, but it's OK. I hardly ever use it.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Set the computer to start on a keyboard press. I lived for years with a desktop with a broken power button. Didn't miss it.
  - Hello71 7y ago
    unfortunately, that wastes a good deal of power in the modern age of USB keyboards...
    - eropple 7y ago
      How many watts does your USB keyboard draw?
      - LeonidasXIV 7y ago
        Depends how many devices are plugged into it via the soldered on USB to m.2 adapter, obviously.
      - Hello71 7y ago
        none, but the USB controller is expensive
  - mariuolo 7y ago
    > I lived for years with a desktop with a broken power button. Why couldn't you replace it?
    - rfrey 7y ago
egdod 7y ago
I used to have a case that had stuff reversed this way. The cables came out at the front, and a cover could close over them to make it not look ratty. I think it was made by Lian Li.
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
This is a semi common issue with VR. There are products available that extend the displayport and usb connections to the front of the case.
woliveirajr 7y ago
Never thought that the solution to my problem of "this cable is 4 inches shorter than it should" would be just making my computer face the wall and never minding about the power button. I'm sure I'll be able to just drill and put another power button on the top of it... And CDs and DVDs? Don't remember last time I used some. Thanks HN!!!
- mcpherrinm 7y ago
  There's another adapter you can get to solve the power button issue! There are PCI slot brackets with power and reset buttons. https://www.highspeedpc.com/ATX_Power_Bracket_p/atxbracket.htm https://www.highspeedpc.com/ATX_Power_Bracket_p/atxbracket.h...
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    What is that supposed to be for? I only see > Also great for isolating problem case switches! ... Which implies that that's not the primary use they envisioned.
    - JonathonW 7y ago
      Exactly what it says in the first line: motherboard power control without a case. Their main product appears to be an open-air ATX "case", which basically amounts to a motherboard mount, a fan mount, a rail to support PCI cards, and a mount point or two for hard drives, without side walls and without a power button. So they also sell a power button mounted onto a PCI bracket, to slot into an open slot on the case's PCI rail.
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        That thing is called a test bench.
    - he_is_legend 7y ago
      I have one. I have a PC tower case with extra cages for holding hard disks - 4 cages with 4 drives each fill the front of the case. However that meant moving the slot where the power switch and front USB connectors were. I didn't need the front USB headers, and I also didn't want to cut a hole in the case, so moving the power switch to a empty PCI bracket in the back was the perfect option.
Swizec 7y ago
Huh? My computer had important (usb) ports on the front top of the case as early as 2005. Do they not make PC towers like that anymore?
- jolmg 7y ago
  They do, but some people may want more USB ports, some an ethernet port, some a DisplayPort display port[1]. A keyboard and mouse is something you'd typically connect to the back, but I can see some people liking the ability to conveniently reconnect them to a laptop. Of course, you can buy a USB hub, you can buy a USB ethernet NIC (though it still probably won't go as fast as the back one), but you can also just flip the box. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429795
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
See, I totally agree with your reasoning, and I would do that with my computer, except... ...the back of my computer is ugly. It matters! My computer is a pretty large fixture in my apartment, and I want my home to look nice.
- ethbro 7y ago
  > ...the back of my computer is ugly. https://www.homedepot.com/s/Spray%2520paint?searchtype=text&NCNI-5 https://www.homedepot.com/s/Spray%2520paint?searchtype=text&...
- reportgunner 7y ago
  You could hide the computer behind a painting.
tfehring 7y ago
Sounds like a good idea in theory, but then you need to reach all the way to the back to access the PCIe card mounted in your optical drive bay.
klyrs 7y ago
Hahaha do you remember when humans used to put data in through the front of the computer?
lazylizard 7y ago
Some boards have power n reset buttons at the back too.
myself248 7y ago
Yeeeeeeeeeeeears ago, a company called Cyber Research made a "backwards PC case" with both the slots and drive bays facing the same side. They used to advertise in PC Computing and Byte and stuff, if I recall correctly. If I had a bunch of time I could probably find 'em on Archive.org or something. Their logo was very distinctive, a 3d-head sort of thing which I remember resembling the middle of the "little brain / big brain / universe brain" meme.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  https://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/reversed-pc-chassis-makes-cabling-easier-5831 https://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/reversed-pc-chassis-mak...
graphitezepp 7y ago
Someone once wanted to play a music CD on my computer. You seriously think I bothered to buy a CD reader for this thing?

loudandskittish 7y ago

Unrelated, but is there a reason I now suddenly have to click "Show Thread" every time someone links to a Twitter thread now?

bepvte 7y ago
No, but there are several "thread unroller" sites to make reading these things easier.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  Does anyone have a link to those pages that turn twitter threads in to normal blog posts?
  - tastroder 7y ago
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html should work
- wp381640 7y ago
  The existence of those apps and their popularity should be a large hint to twitter that their UI is broken
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dmitshur 7y ago

Meanwhile, all I want is a simple high-DPI gaming mouse with a USB-C (rather than USB-A) connector, and it still doesn’t exist in 2020.

heelix 7y ago
Not sure about high performance mice, but Amazon does have some USB-C mice. I picked up for my daughter to play Stardew Valley on her mac. Was looking to avoid the daisy chain of adapters rather than a high sampling rate. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BMLJBJ8/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BMLJBJ8/
- dhosek 7y ago
  Who uses non-Bluetooth mice now?
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    People who enjoy latency free and battery free mice. If its at a desktop there is really no reason to not use a wired mouse. And a wired keyboard is basically essential since bluetooth doesn't work before the OS has booted.
    - emptysea 7y ago
      Not super scientific but Linus Tech Tips has a video comparing the latency of wired and wireless mice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8 TL;DR: wireless and wired gaming mice have the same response times, but normal wireless office mice have slower response times than their gaming counterparts.
      - NamTaf 7y ago
        My biggest issue with wireless office mice is that if the laptop de-prioritises bluetooth interrupts due to CPU load or whatever, then you get this really laggy response. I'm not entirely sure exactly what's going on, but if I open something heavy on my work laptop the mouse will have a 0.5-1 second delay in responding. This doesn't affect the touchpad, which I presume is running over a different protocol that has more real-time interrupts.

jedberg 7y ago

This gave me flashbacks. In the 90s I had to work with a lot of strange hardware. They all had "standard" interfaces, but they weren't really standard at all. Sometimes to connect my laptop to a device required a series of three or four adapters. We also had kits in the office to make your own serial adapters, where you had to figure out the pinouts on each side and then build the adapter one pin at a time.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
This is now usb-c. Its a standard plug that supports somewhere between everything and just usb 2.0
- thedance 7y ago
  Sure, if what you mean by standard is it physically fits together but you can’t tell what the heck it’s doing.
- phh 7y ago
  Nope. The usb-c on rPi doesn't do usb 2.0. I think that when plugging an usb-c into an usb-c, we can assume it won't explode, but that's pretty much it. And I wouldn't totally bet on it.
  - p_l 7y ago
    Had seen too many burned out MBP usb-c ports to believe that nothing will explode...
  - nfriedly 7y ago
    The Pi4 actually does support USB 2.0 over the Type-C port, it just needed a software update to enable it. See https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gadget/ https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gad...
protomyth 7y ago
We got into the habit of ordering a bunch of different adapters every time a new standard presented itself. New FireWire 800? Order adaptors for going to FW400 and Sony's odd duck version. New flash card? Order adapters including to some weird things (I'm sensing a pattern Sony). Seems wasteful but it has saved our bacon quite a few times.

asveikau 7y ago

I kinda want something with a lot of microSD slots and it exposes each one as a separate disk. Then I could run a zfs pool on spare/discarded SD cards around the house. The closest thing I found was something claiming to do something like SD slot raid-0. But the board does all the work, and raid-0 is terrible. And the whole point for me is that SD cards have terrible failure rates, so I figure zfs adds redundancy.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
orev 7y ago
A company made one of these a while ago, and it was awful. Linus Tech Tips has a video on it. The market is just too small and there are so many better options that it’s not worthwhile to make.
- bradknowles 7y ago
  But you could make a Beowulf cluster out of those! Will no one ever think of all the wolves? ;)
- floatboth 7y ago
  No, that one doesn't expose them as separate disks, that one is hardware raid 0
  - orev 7y ago
    The overarching point is the same. The utility of such a device is so small and has such a small potential audience that no one would make one (at least with any reasonable quality). If you really want it, get a USB hub and full each port with an SD card reader.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      I think you described the raid-0 device I was describing. Whoever came up with the idea for that device, I can say with confidence, does not understand the failure rate of SD cards and the mathematics of why raid-0 is a bad idea. You are right though in this "overarching" point that it is very niche and you can probably have a decent solution with USB. I would think that might get a little more clumsy and consume more power than a single board exposing all slots though.

ranger207 7y ago

A lot of these seem pretty useful in certain circumstances. A lot of the "[whatever] to USB header" ones could be used for the boot drive so you can use all of your drive bays for data. I've seen servers with internal USB and SD ports for exactly that purpose, but if you don't have one, these could be useful.

notatoad 7y ago
I agree, a lot of them do seem useful, but I do admit that the situations where I might have found them useful were situations where I was doing dumb stuff.

bathtub365 7y ago

My favourite cursed adapter is the Etherkiller, a mains plug connected to an ethernet cable: https://i.imgur.com/oQBaNQL.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oQBaNQL.jpg

saagarjha 7y ago
Sounds like a Power over Ethernet thing?
- NamTaf 7y ago
  It's PoE, I guess, if you treat any concept of standards compliance with dismissive disdain to the point of intentional malice.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bamf 7y ago
That’s a CAT-o-5-tails

undersuit 7y ago

So there's mini PCI-E and there's mini PCI-E(SATA). The SATA one is just directly connected to a SATA controller, when you look for storage devices for the mini PCI-E format that's all you find thanks to it's prolific use in laptops. The other mini PCI-E is just a 1x PCI-E channel... or a USB connection, when you look for items to connect to mini PCI-E you find Wifi and 3g/4g cards and something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJ45JXD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJ45JXD. Now one day in my searches I did find some Intel Flash drives that were used for ReadyBoost duties on some Windows laptops, but they lack a flash controller and you need a special Linux kernel module to even use it which breaks my want to boot from the mini PCI-E device. Since the industry went the m.2 route the mini PCI-E slot is dead and dying. You can even get m.2 adapters for Wifi(https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-ax200h-m-2/p/0XM-00JK-00063 https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-ax200h-m-2/p/0XM-00JK-00063) or FPGA(https://numato.com/product/aller-artix-7-m-2-fpga-module https://numato.com/product/aller-artix-7-m-2-fpga-module) because it's more universal than a standard PCI-E slot now. This ramble is to nominate mini PCI-E as a cursed connector.

sandinmyjoints 7y ago

I misread this as Cursed Adopters, and thought it was going to be about users who, when they use a technology, seem to encounter more trouble than the average user--a kind of inverse of early adopters.

peterburkimsher 7y ago

I use an SD female to microSD male, plugged into a PQI Air Card (which can use Dmitry's hacked Transcend firmware to run Ubuntu), inside an iPod. Some of these adaptors are useful for geeks like me! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819

captn3m0 7y ago
The photos on the thread are down. Could you re-up them?
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  Sorry about that! I'd run out of space on my Google Drive, so I deleted some files last week. I've reuploaded the photos to Mega. https://mega.nz/#F!75cTSYwZ!d5VYSECvYXXbd_yLCvwPsw https://mega.nz/#F!75cTSYwZ!d5VYSECvYXXbd_yLCvwPsw
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/albums/72157713343408792 https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/albums/721577133...

marcosdumay 7y ago

Well... Header adapters are not meant for PCs, they are there for specialized boards. There are plenty of those. That USB to ISA adapter, why would anybody buy the reverse nowadays? There aren't many computers with an ISA bus, but there are plenty of old specialized ISA boards that would cost a fortune to replace. About that DDR4 extender, I have a computer where the processor cooler inutilized a memory slot (stupid motherboard designers?). I just left it empty, but could have used one of those too. And... Ethernet into M.2 is plenty of interesting. I wonder how useful can it be.

numpad0 7y ago
I’ve read somewhere that manufacturers use extenders as replaceable receptacles for testing. The slots are rated for so many insertion/removal cycles so you’d want them replaceable.
- rasz 7y ago
  That is precisely what the sodimm slot is for. Most service centers use those for memtesting.
Dylan16807 7y ago
The DDR4 extender takes up the same place the memory would, and more. I don't understand what obstruction would be solved by this.
- LeonidasXIV 7y ago
  I thought the same at first but some memory ("gaming memory") might have pretty extensive heatsinks that make it wider than just this adapter PCB. So yeah, you don't win much but sometimes a few millimeters make the difference between fitting things in or not.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    It gives you a profile that's very slightly thinner at the bottom, but I've never seen a cooler that spills past the CPU where the bottom inch is wider than the second-most-bottom inch.

jerrysievert 7y ago

I've had several DOM (disk on module) devices over the years, but I think that the one that I loved the most was the SIMM to DIMM adapter, which adapted multiple SIMM instances to a single DIMM slot when the transition occurred. beautiful piece of tech for the time.

rasz 7y ago
Never seen anything like that :o Plenty of 4x30 pin to 1x72pin adapters tho, both front and back facing so you can run a pair together.

serf 7y ago

PCI PS/2 adapters were quite common when they were needed, just like PCI USB adapters a few years later. I don't know if i'd call them cursed.

joshu 7y ago

downthread there's a USB-ISA adapter (lets you use ISA boards via a USB port) and that was so odd I chipped in actual money to see it happen

raverbashing 7y ago
This is the really cursed one And of course you'll still have to fiddle with the IRQs on the boards you plug and have a USB to ISA bridge(?) driver and I can't imagine how to make an ISA driver talk to a virtual bus over USB Suffice to say if it was the other way around I think ISA wasn't fast enough for USB 2.0 so at least there's that
- rasz 7y ago
  The one ISA-on-USB I saw some years ago came with SDK and you had to write your custom software for it, no transparent automagic isa mapping on PC.
avian 7y ago
I have a box of custom ISA data acquisition boards sitting around somewhere, mostly because I never came around to throwing them out. I actually wrote a Linux driver for them some lifetimes ago. This USB thing might actually make them useful again. I never thought an adapter like this might exist.
rasz 7y ago
Ancient (~2000) Orinoco USB dongles https://wiki.debian.org/orinoco_usb https://wiki.debian.org/orinoco_usb , Proxim/Lucent/Agere Prism chipset = original Apple pcmcia AirPort Card = first wifi 802.11b cards ever, shipped in USB-2-PCMCIA cradle build using Cypress EZ-USB bridge chip https://www.cypress.com/products/ez-usb-fx1 https://www.cypress.com/products/ez-usb-fx1 . PCMCIA is ~16bit ISA

asdkljas 7y ago

made my day. Ima gonna archive all of them to my evernote collection in case I do need one of them!

markchristian 7y ago

I really wish Foone had a blog.

jachee 7y ago
He does. It's just a long series of looooooong twitter threads. ;) I knew this was going to be a foone thread before I saw that it linked to twitter. :)
fanf2 7y ago
https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128 https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128

pintxo 7y ago

Cannot help myself, but am reminded of the famous electric to water adapter: https://etel-tuning.eu/werkzeug-zubehor/183-adapter-drehstrom-auf-gardena.html https://etel-tuning.eu/werkzeug-zubehor/183-adapter-drehstro...

ragebol 7y ago
Hey, I was going to post that! Not sure what I'll get when I actually (try to) order one of those contraptions.
andrewflnr 7y ago
I can't read German, so I can only assume that's a joke... What the heck is going on there?
- avian 7y ago
  It’s a joke. For some reason people like making these fake Gardena adapters. Here’s a water-to-HDMI one: https://imgur.com/FHSFM9o https://imgur.com/FHSFM9o
- Kinrany 7y ago
  There's an international version: https://etel-tuning.com/ https://etel-tuning.com/
gitgud 7y ago
That site is hilarious, after browsing for 10 mins I realised there wasn't a single serious product haha
chaoticmass 7y ago
I made this fake cable website[1] years ago that let you find all kinds of silly and impossible cables. There's a funny story about how I got Google Product search to implement a policy that all products submitted to their database had to actually exist. [1] http://cabledimension.com/ http://cabledimension.com/

PascLeRasc 7y ago

I went through a real cursed search last summer trying to find a series of adapters to connect an Apple Cinema Display, which only has an attached mini-DisplayPort male cable, to a standard PC with only HDMI and DVI. Female mDP to male DP exists, but there's no way forward from there to convert male DP to male HDMI/DVI. I stumbled across female-DP to female-DP, which I thought was my holy grail until it couldn't power on the display. I learned about the difference between active and passive DisplayPort that day. Eventually I just bought a different GPU that had mini-Displayport.

nixpulvis 7y ago
Just try connecting a modern Mac to FireWire 400... You gotta go: FireWire 400 -> FireWire 800 -> Thunderbolt 2 -> Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C). Madness.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bzzzt 7y ago
  Seems like Apple has 'deprecated' the Firewire stack in macOS. Catalina works, but don't count on it being available much longer. Btw, the FW->Thunderbolt conversion adds a noticeable amount of latency to my audio interface :(
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    What's still out there to use FireWire on?
  - rasz 7y ago
    At least it doesnt outright drop packets like the USB audio on modern macs.
fanf2 7y ago
DisplayPort and HDMI have very different protocols: HDMI (like DVI) has three separate physical channels, one for each colour, whereas DisplayPort sends whole pixels down a single logical channel. DisplayPort outputs can switch to HDMI mode to support passive DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters, but HDMI outputs cannot support DisplayPort screens.

exabrial 7y ago

Missed a realy useful one: Apple SSD to M2.

vxNsr 7y ago

> And here's another one that's weirder and weirder the longer you look at it. So it's a 5.25" bay mounted hard drive, but it's a RAM disk. Now a RAM disk is when you use some RAM like a disk, but this isn't on the motherboard, so... how is it RAM? how does it connect? see when they call this a RAM disk, they really mean it on the "DISK" part. It's SATA! It's a SATA drive you use like any other drive, it's just fast as hell because it's backed by RAM! but doesn't RAM lose its contents when turned off? YEP! that's why it has that big honking battery there, it keeps the RAM active when the PC is turned off. I wonder how long that battery lasts for, also I guess wiping your data is easy... just unplug the battery, no way anyones gonna get at your data then.

aidenn0 7y ago
These things were excellent back when flash had poor density and mediocre speeds; the cost per MB was similar when fully populated and it was significantly faster.
- sebazzz 7y ago
  Unfortunately SATA is the limiting factor. However, they would be awesome on the PCIe bus.
- vxNsr 7y ago
  They were actually used? by who?
  - p_l 7y ago
    Caches, scratch drives for compilation or whatever other disk intensive process you had, etc. Heavy industrial models were the ancestors of today's all-flash SAN arrays, later common in hybrid ram+flash. RAMsan was one of the major vendors.
    - elFarto 7y ago
      CCP used one for Eve Online. They stuck their SQL server on it.

hatsunearu 7y ago

SDIO? I have no idea how this works. Does the M.2 SSD have some sort of fallback mode to talk over SDIO or does it emulate an SD card interface? If it's the former is there an SDIO driver for M.2 SSDs? Lol

ohmyblock 7y ago

Few years ago I replaced my Ipod's broken hard drive with a compactflash card using a strange adapter, it works great.

basicplus2 7y ago

Everything should have an adapter to connect back to RS232

raverbashing 7y ago
Reminds me of some PS4 or Xbox (I think) reverse engineering video where they they tunneled PCI-E over RS232 (around 8m15s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA

lvturner 7y ago

Is it just me, or are none of the images loading on twitter? Edit: they loaded in the end, it was just very slow

walrus01 7y ago

Probably 80% of those are hack solutions intended to prolong the service life of weird embedded/industrial x86 systems. If you go far enough down the rabbit hole of weird embedded system component makers, and system integrators (mostly Taiwan based) you'll find all sorts of weird stuff. The sort of pieces you'd use to build a x86 system running a complicated thing in a factory or industrial process, or a kiosk... Armored stainless steel keyboards, fanless systems with big heatsinks built into the chassis, and so forth.

sneak 7y ago
If you dig through the twitter history of the account linked to (one of the best on twitter, I might add) you will find many examples of exactly this type of industrial hardware.
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
From the thread: > although if you really want to live the Real Life, you might want to consider... m.2 CANBUS! > Have you ever wanted to interface with the network running your car from an m.2 slot? if so, go to jail. but not before buying this! CAN bus is used everywhere in industrial and embedded systems, not just cars. Lots of PLCs, servo cards, networked sensors use it, you need low latency to get the task done, and you usually prefer a small-form-factor fanless DIN-rail mount PC in a control cabinet, so full-size PCIe cards or USB adapters are no-go. M.2 it is! Likewise with the industrial USB-C and waterproof HDMI down thread; positive locking connectors don't usually go with modern touchscreens. I think you'd see a lot of these connectors and adapters if you worked maintenance in (or just got a tour through) a local manufacturing facility.
sleepybrett 7y ago
I've got a weird SCSI to sdcard interface, I think it was initially developed for an 80s era sampler (sampling for music). But it works great in my Macintosh SE/30.

uk_programmer 7y ago

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220346988949504/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220346988949504/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220403821764608 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220403821764608 These sort of adapters are used a lot by people like myself who muck around with retro hardware. No need to rely on hardrives that are 20-30 years old. Just plug in an adapter in and then swap out SD / CF cards. There are even CF to ISA card adapters that you can buy in kit form: https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/tag/xt-ide/ https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/tag/xt-ide/ However the market is obviously very niche.

Zenst 7y ago
Exactly that, I don't have a link but SCSI adapters to SD card's are used by many retro hardware people and they love them for that. I don't have a link to the device but a review of one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1mu7TPtE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1mu7TPtE8
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  I watch that guys channel from time to time. A lot of this stuff is easier thanks to forums and Youtube tbh.
himinlomax 7y ago
Keep in mind that the market for "retro hardware" is not limited to amateur tech archæologists. It also and probably mostly includes users of industrial equipment. Their useful lifetime can span decades even if the computers controlling them are beyond obsolete long before that, and replacing them can be nearly impossible or not economically viable.
buildsjets 7y ago
I have one and use it. Want to add an SSD to your Apple ][? Boom. https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/reactivemicro-driveturbo-for-iie-and-iigs/ https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/reactivemicro-drivetur...

jfim 7y ago

The SIM card one is actually used by SIM card developers, I've had a few of those on my desk in a previous life. Basically, when developing applets for SIM cards, it's a lot easier to deal with plugging in a full sized SIM card in a large slot than dealing with a tiny modern size SIM card, especially when dealing with multiple handsets. The testing process with a handset is simply to write the applet on the card using a full sized smart card reader, then take the card, put it in the handset and boot it. With the adapter, the steps of putting the card in the handset and taking it out are much easier, since there's no need to move a tiny card and extract it using a tool.

Zenst 7y ago
Yes, the aspect that you need to test things on many mobile networks does become easier when you can easily switch the SIM - that alone makes it kinda essential - unless you have multiple devices for each network and there are a lot - more so if you factor in roaming. That and nobody ever advertises how many times you can swap a sim and the socket pins won't break. Kinda makes you wonder how many times you can swap a sim before the socket suffers failure of some form, from wear and tear. I've certainly had a fair few break over my lifetime and that's from light usage. Though getting full sized sim cards is becoming harder these days I have noticed - even the precut multi sim that you push out the sim for the size and the aspect that the last phone I saw that would take a full sized (credit card sized) sim form factor was two decades ago.
- jfim 7y ago
  The ISO/IEC 7816 interfaces can pretty sturdy (eg. for ATMs), but for phones, I'd wager that most phones don't ever change the SIM card more than once or twice; phone manufacturers probably cut costs there.
exikyut 7y ago
Speaking solely from a position of outside naive curiosity, how does SIM card applet development work, why/where is custom development needed, and what sort of security considerations (are|need to be) taken into account? For example, I can settle doctor's appointments etc with what looks like a perfectly ordinary card terminal; I swipe my healthcare card and after a long sequence of button-presses by the (very patient) receptionist I get a receipt with the Medicare logo etc on it (this is in Australia). I've always wondered if all the logic to do this is hiding in the SIM card or if the card terminal is also running specialized firmware. The only bit of related anecdata I can remember was... wait, I don't believe it but I found it, probably one of the more interesting bits of applet development out there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140208 (the entire thread is a bit of a rabbithole too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328)

rwmj 7y ago

I really could have used a SD-card to USB headers adapter back when I was trying to put a bigger boot drive inside my QNAP NAS. It has a USB header on the motherboard which normally has only 512M of storage on it, which is rather too small for a normal Linux distro. I ended up with a USB key hanging out of one of the USB ports at the back which is way less elegant.

ginko 7y ago

I only see one adapter (M2 to SD) and some random tech tweets. Am I missing something here?

edvinasbartkus 7y ago
Click on "Show thread"

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tenant 7y ago

Twitter is such a shitty website to have to look at anything on that's bigger than a tweet.

gambiting 7y ago
Yeah, I saw one message a picture and went "that's it??", But then discovered it has a view thread button and there's more hiding there. Such a bizzaire UI experience.
- MrRadar 7y ago
  I really hate that new "feature" too. I don't get why anyone would want it. Edit: I think I figured it out. I think it's supposed to make it easier to see replies to the linked/original tweet which you would otherwise have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to see. The problem is that they implemented it backwards. It should show the thread by default and give you an option to see the non-thread replies to the current tweet instead.

floatboth 7y ago

> I'LL TELL YOU WHY NOT 4 MICROSD CARDS: > BECAUSE YOU COULD FIT A FUCK TON MORE ON THERE! LTT did a video with this product a couple years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frnBoqqI_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frnBoqqI_Q

yummypaint 7y ago

Looking forward to the fake m.2 drives on amazon and ebay built with this

scoutt 7y ago

Why the negativity? Why the "OH FUCK YOU - FUCK YOU, IT EXISTS (author words)" tone when there are entire markets/areas where retro-compatibility and weird conversions are a requirement? I know that an average user won't buy many of these adapters, but for a person doing that kind of research, is it really that weird? I mean, the author is a "Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators." We're retrofitting 18K devices with SSDs through a M2-to-USB converter (we have reasons to do it that way). Someone is selling my company 18K of those boards. So, not bad at all. And that's just us.

miloignis 7y ago
I don't believe they're actually angry or negative that it exists! It's an expression of surprise, using hyperbole to communicate in a funny way how bizarre it is without context. Foone is an old and weird hardware enthusiast, they love this sort of stuff. Edit: I mean they love old and weird hardware, not that they themselves are old and weird.
- codeisawesome 7y ago
  I definitely interpreted it as the latter so thanks for clarifying with that edit :’D
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Of course there is nothing wrong with a person being old or weird, either.
krilly 7y ago
This isn't even a strange adapter, I'd be surprised if this didn't exist. Why not get excited about cassette tape to 3.5mm adapters (very real and also very useful)?
- mindcrime 7y ago
  Why not get excited about cassette tape to 3.5mm adapters (very real and also very useful)? I use one of these nearly every day, since my truck doesn't have an aux-in jack, but it did come with a factory cassette tape player.

walrus01 7y ago

> have you ever thought that the real problem was that the front and back of your computer are backwards? This is a real market for telecom stuff, and one of the reasons shallow depth 1U and 2U servers with all of their connections on the front panel exist. Including power, whether ac or DC, network, indicator lights, and all the common ports found on an atx motherboard.

Noxmiles 7y ago

I really love the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT, connected to all GPIO Pins, with seperate USB cable! :D

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

robotnikman 7y ago

I actually used the microSD to SD adapter before in my old Galaxy Note 3. Since the Note 3 had a removable back which you could use to access the both the battery and microSD card slot unlike most phones today, I replaced it with one normally used with a Zerolemon extended battery, and used it with a 512GB SD card since microSD cards did not come in sizes that large at the time.

ChrisArchitect 7y ago

just noticed this is a thread from Feb 3. Not that it's not interesting, but was wondering I couldn't find it in foone's recent stream. (an HN re-submit I take it)