Today I set out on some dragon-level pc hacking... literally. My notebook needs an "B&M Key 2242 Nvme SSD".
For that subset of SSDs, they are either unavailable/obsolete, of dubious quality or overpriced. Plainly speaking, short SSDs with two slots, but not SATA-type.
Short SSDs with the "wrong slot" (but of the right type) are cheaply available - you can see already where this is going... To check if this is even feasible,
pinouts of the two variants were compared. Looks good so far, we loose 2 of 4 PCIe lanes, but that should work out.
These are negotiated on boot and only "proved healthy" ones are used. So a fall-back to less lanes is anticipated.
Pinout is mostly the same, marked in red are the only incompatible contacts. Often a used contact on one is left open on the other, easing the requirements.
Hmm, only one way to find out for sure I guess
An SSD was luckily sourced locally, a slot cut very carefully with a tiny Dremel cut off disk, a bit of fine work with knife and file...
Incompatible contacts masked off with Kapton tape, and (with sweat beads on the forehead) inserted into the notebook, taking care not to push the tape away...
Works like a charm on first try, does not even complain about missing lanes, boots from device no problem
Now to aquire one in the size I actually want and do it all over again