Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nrp 33 days ago
Point of clarification since it isn’t clear from the title. This isn’t a Framework product, but a product by Wisdpi designed for the Framework Expansion Card form factor.
3 comments

Very cool to see an ecosystem developing around that form factor. Like the old PCMCIA, except not awful.
I do wish there were something like Oculink, but with power available over the connector. USB-C does almost everything, but it seems the chips to break out PCIe lanes for USB4/Thunderbolt for higher speed devices are still a significant cost for accessories.
hey Nirav, dumb question: would it be possible to have usb-c ethernet adapters using intel chips in order to have vPro features on framework laptops (along with vpro-enabled intel chips) ?

That's probably the missing cherry on top, as having vpro once the framework motherboard gets reused as a home server it gives some manageability features.

vPro requires the NIC to be connected directly to the PCH (over PCIe/CNV). This is going over USB, which won't cut it.

An Intel WLAN card in an M.2 slot on the mainboard might work (given your givens; a vPro enabled chipset).

> vPro requires the NIC to be connected directly to the PCH (over PCIe/CNV). This is going over USB, which won't cut it.

i see, i did not know about this.

however, let me use your knowledge and ask you another question: vpro-enabled thinkpads without an ethernet port do have a dongle that should allow vpro-usage.

is that some kind of vpro-specific dongle? i mean, iirc that dongle also has to be connected to a very specific port

I'm afraid I don't know anything about ThinkPads.

Hazarding a guess I'd say it's using Thunderbolt (hence the specific port requirement) which allows you to tunnel PCIe over it.

Though it is odd that they wouldn't just go with the WiFi on the motherboard option.

Which they made in partnership with Framework.