M.2. Please Just Standardize
Room and Board for Tiny Boards
Welcome to a succinct and surreal paraphrase of every prime time property show and portal site you have seen or scrolled through. This month, a gregarious group of four trim, talented students with an instinct to categorize colossal compendiums of “human authored”, digitally amalgamated content, were seeking affordable housing. Crucey, Plexie and brother and sister Sammie X and Sammie S, didn’t have pockets or bank accounts. With a budget as low as their profile, their only chance of agreeable accommodation was to share. Could any of the following six, variably furnished peripherals graciously realise their humble demands.
Property Number 1: BPLUS M2PS. This card’s PCI-E credentials were used to source power from its host slot, but nothing more. Data was transmitted and received over the SATA bus via a pair of ports mounted on the front, which were in turn, married up to two connectors on the supporting motherboard. Ideal for Crucey but ill-composed and wholly uninhabitable for the rest.
Property Number 2: BPLUS M2P4S – This admittedly charming two birth bachelor pad was little else than a mirror opposite of our preceding address. A PCI-E exclusive affair with no electrical link to the SATA bus. Plexie and the Sammy twins adored it from the very moment contacts met with pins, even if Sammy S found the shelving a little cramped for her feverish filing methods. Crucey however, was understandably apprehensive.
“I’ve no qualms sharing sockets,” she said. “But what about my fresh piping hot data supply? These three have theirs and they’re already way faster at cataloguing. I’ll become a worthless stick in the solder if I live here, next please!”
Property Number 3: JWE M2 Enabler. Sounded promising, but the sign above this snazzy apartment’s luxurious suite soon put paid to any hope that it might effectively house all sticks concerned. It’s state of the art plumbing was intended to extract the fastest, most efficient forms of archiving a PCI-E module could execute. Sammie S was delighted.
“This is the place, I’ve never felt so alive, so invigorated,” she enthused. “I’m ready for anything, reads and writes random or sequential. Give me garbage to collect and swap files to foster. How I would love to be a boot drive and regulate an entire OS. I’d blow those boxy cable bound relics away. What about you Plexie, Sammie X?”
“Absolutely!” Cried Sammy X
“That was our dream,” Plexie added in a pensive tone. What we’ve all been working towards, but aren’t we forgetting someone?”
Plexie was correct. Once again, wiring for any worthy SATA siblings with cells to spare for a Steamer’s cache had been wilfully neglected, casting woeful Crucey out into the cold.
“This is PCI Partisanship,” Crucey angrily asserted. “All I want to do is chronicle jpgs, gifs, avis and mp3s of with my friends. I may not be the quickest but my integrity has never been questioned. That sign is profoundly offensive at best and a hate crime at worst. I’m out of here.”
Property Number 4: Asus Hyper m.2 x4. Dear me, it would appear Crucey’s hysteria was the symptom of an unsavoury truth. The sole difference between this dourly decorated but stylish studio and our previous prejudicial offering was the absence of a rude and dismissive notice above the door. Silently, the party moved on.
Property Number 5: Plextor M6e HHHF. This handsome, compact abode used to be Plexie’s own, and was single bedroom version of the second residence the committed quartet had viewed. It’s passages and pins were far wider and more plentiful than Plexie felt necessary but both seemed to precisely complement Sammie X’s proclivities.
“You were lucky to live here Plexie,” he remarked. “It’s enviably proportioned and so well planned. Contacts exactly where you need them. I could’ve worked wonders with all this extra space. I’d have flooded all four of these cavernous corridors with flacs, rars, zips and oggs. Why did you move?
“I told you, I was lonely,” Plexie ruefully replied. “And besides, as you know, my IOP quotient, queueing technique and indexing abilities can’t begin to approach yours, or your sister’s. Come on, let’s leave, Crucey will be a nervous wreck if we don’t locate a suitable digs soon.”
Could a happy ending be just around the corner? Does fortune favour the patient.