Sure, let’s dive into this piece and give it a spin! Buckle up.
So, here’s the deal. These MicroSD Express cards? They’re pricey as heck. Like, what gives? Anyway, folks out there are getting creative—trying these wild DIY hacks to beef up their Switch 2 storage. I was scrolling through YouTube (you know how it is), and stumbled on this channel, Better Gaming, who are trying out this quirky open-source adapter. It’s specifically for the Switch 2 and hooks up with M.2 NVMe 2230 SSDs. Spoiler: Their first shot flopped.
Okay, backtracking a bit—I’ve actually gabbed about this gadget before. Named the SDEX2M2 project, it’s tapping into MicroSD Express’s PCIe roots and doing some fancy dances with the NVMe stuff. So, it’s supposedly riding on this SD Express 7.1 standard, which is geek-speak for a PCIe Gen 3×1 interface if you’re keeping track.
Oh, there’s this YouTube video you gotta see. But—I digress, hm—so, Better Gaming took these SDEX2M2 blueprints and whipped up a few PCB duplicates via some third-party wizardry. After they got those boards, it was all solder-galore to make it tick—with stuff like an M.2 connector and some R1 resistor (whatever that means).
Now, here comes the chaotic fun part: imagine four rounds of soldering, four circuits, but finally—voila! They got this adapter clicking with a Corsair MP600 Mini NVMe SSD on the Switch 2. It fit like a glove. I guess it’s a match made in tech-heaven… until, um, it wasn’t. Bam—error code “2016-0641”—an irritating pop-up shouted that the Switch 2 couldn’t do its dance with the microSD card. Beat that for dramatics.
After poking around more, the YouTuber realized these passive adapters weren’t quite the communicative sorts the Switch 2 craves. The console expected a hip chat with the built-in controller that comes with those fancy MicroSD Express whatevers—but surprise! NVMe SSDs have their controllers too, but they’re speaking a different language.
Now, the folks at SDEX2M2 aren’t asleep at the wheel; they’re supposed to be hashing out a new model with some FPGA gizmo acting like a MicroSD Express mimic. If it works, man, gamers can finally stash more goodies without selling a kidney. Those microSD cards are, like, 20 to 25 cents per GB (Math class, anyone?), making 256GB run you over 50 bucks easy. Meanwhile, 1TB NVMe SSDs, like that Corsair MP600 Mini, pop up for a neat $89.99 mark.
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