Latitude E6400/6410 internal minicard connectors bootable?

in the gallery of this http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6400-Notebook.12875.0.html review i see a total of 3 minicard connectors; 1 for an HSDPA modem; 1 WLAN and a 3rd one

is it possible to fit the 3rd connector with an internal pcie SSD (Runcore 64gb indilinx base drive) and boot from it?

the thought of a high performance minipcie boot drive; 5400rpm 750gb HDD and bluray ODD in my new E6410 is very tempting

 

Almost 100% sure that the slots aren't bootable on the E6400. I don't see reason why they'd change that on the E6410, either. You can always try and tell us how it goes, though

 

Two of those slots appear to be for half-height cards but the WWAN slot (in the front left corner) appears to be full height. I think it is unlikely that the D6400 would boot from one of those slots.

The E6410 is slightly different because it supports Latitude On which, I assume, is a bootable mini-card.

John

 

i hope that you are right; my le6410 comes as a "latitude on" ready system and the latitude on upgrade is 40€ which suggests that it isn't just a lame additional software layer and makes use of some dedicated hardware; i'll report back once my new notebook arrives and keep you guys up to date

 

You can understand how Latitude On works by studying the documentation of the E4300. As I understand it, it has an ARM CPU on a little card.

It is an option worth exploring. However, if it is easy to implement booting the computer off a mini-card SSD then I'm surprised that Dell doesn't offer this as an option.

John

 

i guess that they want to set the latitude prant below the precision brand as the M4500 (based on the e6510??) offers a 64gb ssd minicard as an option

 

Wait wait, the Latitude On card (at least on the E4300) isn't based off of a mini PCIe card. I wouldn't think this would be different on the E6410 either...

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/late4300/en/sm/lat-on.htm#wp1186516

 

from my under standing there are 3 versions of latitude on.
1. Latitude on Reader ( software boot enviroment simular to media direct)
2. Latitude on Flash (Uses computers proc, memory and has own storage)
3. latitude on full (SELF CONTAINED ARM, MEMORY, STORAGE)

 

Look at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=6150859 - seems that in E6410 the "latitude ON flash" is just a flash mini-pcie ssd, and the latitude-on OS is actually booted from there, if you press the designated button. I wonder only if one can hack it and have his own disk image there. Maaany cooool things could be done with it....

 

Additional confirmation in Jeff Avery's blog (with photos): http://blog.jeffavery.com/?p=117.

Short: Chris Compson is right about 3 versions of Latitude On. "L-on Flash" is a bootable module. There are some strange compatibility problems (cannot have L-on Flash together with WWAN).

My additional findings from photos and partnumbers etc.: L-on Flash is a custom built module from Smart Modular Technologies . Their profile is very close to this product, but there is no hint about its parameters (this is a custom module, anyway). It is probably not a full SSD, but rather an USB drive - as it is based on PHISON's PS2251-33 USB-to-Flash micro-controller ( see www.phison.com). The controller is "smart" enough (e.g. there is 80C51 clone on-board), so DELL may make it very hard to use in a nonstandard way. The other way up: Dell may have used it in a nonstandard way themselves to make it harder for us. We shall see.