12-08-2019, 01:47 AM
(12-07-2019, 11:28 AM)Arwen Wrote: From the December 2019 Pine blog update, the board shown for the PineTab's LTE / SSD expansion would not work in the Pinebook Pro.
In fact, that reminded me most LTE / Cell MODEMs don't have a SIM slot. So perhaps the Pinebook Pro's NVMe expansion board won't work at all.
Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying.
(12-07-2019, 11:28 AM)Arwen Wrote: That was good information in the second link. I don't know an easy way to tell if a LTE / Cell MODEM M.2 device uses PCIe or USB.
As for using a PineTab instead, your choice. The PineTab is definantly lower spec'ed than the Pinebook Pro. How much so, and will it affect your use? I don't know.
That said, it's possible a new, Pinebook Pro PCIe card could be made;
- PCIe to USB converter chip
- PCIe 3.3 volt to 5v converter, (don't know if this is needed, but external USB devices use 5 volts)
- M.2 short slot, (30 & 42?)
- SIM slot
Such a card would not be very expensive. It's just at present, low volume and still very early days for the Pinebook Pro. You would need ARM32 or AMR64 Linux drivers for what every PCIe to USB converter chip was used. But, careful selection of the chip would mean they already exist.
It may even be possible to make this board support either PCIe LTE / Cell MODEMs, or USB ones.
Personally, I don't really want to get the PineTab (at least not as a lowend laptop replacement).
But if the Pine team has no interest in creating a LTE board for the PineBook Pro, then I will take a look at the PineTab specs (once the device releases) to see if it is good enough for what I want to do.
With that being said, I hope there will be enough people that are interested in seeing LTE add-on support for the PineBook Pro. I doubt I will be helpful with the technical issue, but I can always try to dig around and find some dirt.