pi 500

As I briefly mentioned yesterday, someone mentioned in this blog's comments a successful M.2 socket installation on the empty header on the Pi 500 (something I attempted, rather poorly!). With a few added components, and 3.3V supplied to a pad on the bottom via a bench power supply, the M.2 slot works just fine, allowing the use of NVMe SSDs or other PCIe devices.

Indeed, this person emailed me further proof, along with notes for anyone wishing to follow in their footsteps.

First, solder on four minuscule capacitors (rating may be gleaned off the CM5 IO Board schematics, I think?) on the PCIe lines heading to the NVMe slot. These are incredibly small, so a good microscope and decent SMD soldering skills are pretty necessary.

I mentioned in my Pi 500 review Raspberry Pi is dogfooding their own microcontroller in the new Pi 500. An RP2040 sits next to the keyboard ribbon cable connector, and interfaces it through a USB port directly into the RP1 chip:

In good news for keyboarding enthusiasts, the RP2040 seems to be flashed with the open-source QMK ('Quantum Mechanical Keyboard') Firmware. Thanks to a reader, 'M', who figured that out!

Raspberry Pi this morning launched the Pi 500 and a new 15.6" Pi Monitor, for $90 and $100, respectively.

They're also selling a Pi 500 Kit, complete with a Power Supply, Mouse, and micro HDMI to HDMI cable, for $120. This is the first time Raspberry Pi is selling a complete package, where every part of a desktop computer could be Pi-branded—and makes me wonder if uniting all these parts into one could result in an eventual Pi Laptop...

Before we get too deep, no, the Pi 500 does not include a built-in M.2 slot. Sort-of.