Reverse Engineering ASM2464PD USB4 to NVME Adaptors
I bought a bunch of these ASM2464PD USB4 to NVME Adaptors from Alibaba to test out for use with ThunderScope. Turns out the design of these are a lot simpler than the ones based on the intel chipset, so I figured I could make one myself.
The ASM2464PD does not have a public datasheet, but there is one you can find if you are so inclined. You can find more info at a-little-wifi's repo, where they are designing one of these adaptors as well!
I am avoiding using any leaked or non-public info for this project (see: cleanroom design). I'm not sure if it's actually useful legally for this project to exist, but I'll do it anyway since it seems like a fun first foray into reverse engineering!
Oh and this is all hardware (it's me afterall, I love me some PCBs), so for firmware stuff check out Cyrozap's repo. I'll have some flash dumps on here eventually once I put together a setup to do that.
This is the one I started with, seemed like a good candidate with it's generous decoupling and refrence designators.
TODO: nice write-up. For now check out this thread and this thread for some quick quips and pretty pictures.
It doesn't? But it should? Wtf is going on
Ok, I am no longer cleanroom reverse engineering this thing, I am now on a quest to figure out why this accursed thing doesn't work
After a lot of searching, this chip will just not work with older TBT3 hosts. Since compatibility is already hard enough with pcie tunneling, I've decided not to pursue this chip for ThunderScope. I'll keep the repo up, but I don't plan on doing more work on it. It was good practice to eventually tackle the JHL9000 series for TBT5 - that'll be a lot of fun.