VACANT LOT: can missing sockets be added?

BadPeteNo

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Mar 9, 2013
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First, I realize the soldering would be quite challenging. That said...

You ever see a board that was designed to handle for example 4 sata ports but only has two and there's just dead solder points where the other 2 ports should go?

I've noticed the bios on these rigs seem to think those ports are still there. If I soldered a connector off a dead board, would it work?

The REAL challenge: Would this work with a pciex16 slot?

Thanks for continuing to humor my questions.
 
The reason for the vacant solder spots is because there are other versions of the same motherboard that have ports on those locations. The motherboard manufacturer, then, will ultimately solder ports onto those slots on some models, so it can be done. The catch is the wiring that hooks the ports to the rest of the board (which I don't think is present in the boards that don't actually have the ports on there, though I may be wrong).
 
I agree with you about the 'why'. I generally only see this on prebuilt rigs. They only need to install what they want for that tier.

It seems logical that the wiring should be the same, as it's part of the PCB. If they were going to skip the wiring, they'd skip putting in the 'vacant lot'. I'm more thinking there may be some difference in what they burn to the eprom or some chipset difference.