After much help from Bodhi, thank you! ,
I have attempted and made work a microUSB dual card in the minipcie slot, this was mainly because I don't use the wifi card and also I wanted to free up all my usb ports! Keep in mind I used a working USB rootfs with debian installed.
Please read entirely before trying this ! I claim no responsibility for personal injury or bricked unit!
How I did this was not too complicated but I wanted to log it all so others with this will be able to bypass the roadblocks I ran into, first I ordered a minipcie with dual slot microusb ports ( i'm sure others will work) :
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S6AQUK0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
next I ordered 2 micro pcie usb cards, I used sandisk 16gb, the reason for two was that I was hoping to use the second as a swap however I have not tested that at this time but I did format it as a linux-swap.
next I took the working usb rootfs and put it in my pc, (I used windows and miniTool Partition Wizard Edition, however I am sure you could do this in gparted or cp in terminal) then inserted the micro usb and ran the program. then I simply copied the partition. It took some time btw:)
after that i took out the micro usb and inserted the second one and formatted it to linux-swap.
next I placed both cards in the mpcie adapter ( they insert by sliding the clips and placing them in and putting the little covers back over the cards and sliding them back, yes it took me a bit to figure it out, my eyes are not what they used to be:)
I then unplugged and took apart the pogoplug, removed the wifi card on the back of the board.
next I inserted the card and tested it by powering it up out of the case, (not recommended because it has live 120v when exposed) and it did absolutely nothing!
The issue was that the card touches the board very slightly and I almost bricked the board. my fix was some small strips of electrical tape placed between the card and the board then snugging down the retaining screws. plugged it back in and had lights! simple successes excite me:) after testing it out I had net console access just like with the usb rootfs. so then i re-assembled the unit and rebooted and am keeping the usb rootfs as a backup in case I get crazy and mess up the working micro usb....
I hope this helps someone that is looking for more ports and I am no expert so feel free to let me know if there are other things I can do with this!!
Thanks and good luck! Echowarrior108
I have attempted and made work a microUSB dual card in the minipcie slot, this was mainly because I don't use the wifi card and also I wanted to free up all my usb ports! Keep in mind I used a working USB rootfs with debian installed.
Please read entirely before trying this ! I claim no responsibility for personal injury or bricked unit!
How I did this was not too complicated but I wanted to log it all so others with this will be able to bypass the roadblocks I ran into, first I ordered a minipcie with dual slot microusb ports ( i'm sure others will work) :
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S6AQUK0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
next I ordered 2 micro pcie usb cards, I used sandisk 16gb, the reason for two was that I was hoping to use the second as a swap however I have not tested that at this time but I did format it as a linux-swap.
next I took the working usb rootfs and put it in my pc, (I used windows and miniTool Partition Wizard Edition, however I am sure you could do this in gparted or cp in terminal) then inserted the micro usb and ran the program. then I simply copied the partition. It took some time btw:)
after that i took out the micro usb and inserted the second one and formatted it to linux-swap.
next I placed both cards in the mpcie adapter ( they insert by sliding the clips and placing them in and putting the little covers back over the cards and sliding them back, yes it took me a bit to figure it out, my eyes are not what they used to be:)
I then unplugged and took apart the pogoplug, removed the wifi card on the back of the board.
next I inserted the card and tested it by powering it up out of the case, (not recommended because it has live 120v when exposed) and it did absolutely nothing!
The issue was that the card touches the board very slightly and I almost bricked the board. my fix was some small strips of electrical tape placed between the card and the board then snugging down the retaining screws. plugged it back in and had lights! simple successes excite me:) after testing it out I had net console access just like with the usb rootfs. so then i re-assembled the unit and rebooted and am keeping the usb rootfs as a backup in case I get crazy and mess up the working micro usb....
I hope this helps someone that is looking for more ports and I am no expert so feel free to let me know if there are other things I can do with this!!
Thanks and good luck! Echowarrior108