I’ve don’t have any drawings yet, but I do have a plan for its physical layout being a vertical zig zag, because the LM4A is wider than the slot on the clockwork board since the LM4A uses a DDR4 SODIMM profile whereas the ClockworkPi board uses a DDR2 SODIMM slot.
The adaptor board is going to use a DDR4 connector sitting at the far end of a DDR2 profile card so that the LM4A sits at 180° from the orientation of the mainboard siting above where the modules would usually be just above the locking clips for the DDR2 slot, this is the lowest profile method that I think is practical, it’s going to make routing interesting, but I think its the most sensible way to implement the adaptor since it will keep the LM4A mostly within the horizontal footprint of existing modules and make it easy to install or remove, height might be the only problematic factor, I think it’ll might be tight, but should fit given the height of the CM4 in its adaptor.
Does anyone want the USBC port to have its data functionality it would only be usb2 and would require a usb hub IC to be integrated to the adaptor board, the CM4 adaptor doesn’t have it connected but the usb2 pins from the port are in the connector, I was thinking of adding the functionality, but since usb2 spec theoretically caps out at 60 MB/s or less anyway so I’m not sure its worth the added complexity, so I thought I’d ask if anyone wanted this capability.
Also has anyone found or made a 3d model of the uconsoles chassis yet? or at least have the vertical depth available from the mainboard or CM board to the rear cover, doesn’t seem like Clockwork has released a 3d model yet so i was trying to find one that perhaps someone that has received their uconsole made on the forum, but haven’t had much luck…
I wanted to verify the tolerances for the thickness of the thermal pads or make a heat spreader to better transfer heat to the backplane for dissipation, or maybe even machine a new backplane with some fins for better heat dissipation and i haven’t received mine yet so i cant just check it myself and I’m having difficulty finding mechanical details, some help there would be appreciated.
Sorry for the lack of any updates took a bit of a break over the holiday season and then I"ve had some problems with my health ¦(
Here are some pics of a test board when I was investigating whether it’d be viable to use a 2 layer board, I decided against it since there was going to be to many compromises and the tracks were already as thin as I could viably make them and it was getting very cramped with barely half of the signal busses, but the physical form factor will remain more or less the same.
The final board is in progress I’ve gone to a 4 layer board for better signal track routing.
I’m using an Everest Semi ES8327 for the audio since it has built in headphone level output and microphone signal handling (the cluster on the left in the second image)
I’ve also used a Texas Instruments TUSB8020B hub to allow a USB3.0 port to be added to the side panel which I might make optional since not everyone may need the USB3 capability, but its not exactly going to add much more cost either way. and if not used for the USB3 capability it can still be used to add functionality to the USB C port even though it’d only be USB2 since its not wired up for USB3 capability on the uconsole’s board.
Also thanks @drh For the available offsets it loos like there will at least 4-5mm from the stock compute board to the back cover which will be enough for the adaptor to fit in which is good.
Possible? Yes! A ton of tinkering to get it to boot? Definitely. I think community support will come for very popular boards, like the coming CM5. Perhaps you can adapt the OS that the board manufacturers ship for it for the uConsole as the uConsole has custom scripts for booting.
