The innovative form factor positions the Pi 500 as a potential game-changer for casual computing and light productivity tasks.
However, the lack of NVMe M.2 storage support prevents it from reaching its full potential.
Instead, the gear includes a 32GB Class A2 microSD card, which should suffice for most tasks.
However, microSD storage is notably slower, and an NVMe upgrade could significantly boost performance.
The highly resourceful Raspberry Pi community took the challenge head-on, and succeeded.
Geerling detailed the modder’s insights in a blog post published on December 13.
The process involves soldering several tiny capacitors onto the PCIe lines connected to the M.2 slot.
Another crucial step involves connecting an external bench power supply.
However, the bench power supply proved to be unnecessary.
Just got the M.2 slot on my Raspberry Pi500 populated and working.
I’m working on pulling together a Digikey list of the parts I needed to pull this off.
Image credit:Jeff Geerling
