An enthusiast and circuit engineer (George Smart) connected external adapters to the Raspberry Pi 5 via the PCIe bus through the standard microcomputer connector.
It turned out that, in contrast to the implementation of the capabilities of working with the PCIe bus in Pi 4, in the updated Pi 5 architecture you can easily (if you have knowledge in circuit design) connect external expansion cards and peripheral devices via the PCIe bus.
Raspberry Pi 5 has two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet port, two 4-channel MIPI transceivers, PCIe 2.0 x1 via M.2 HAT or other adapter, 5V DC power via USB-C, classic Raspberry 40- GPIO Pi pin header and two micro HDMI outputs.
Smart explained that he had to remove the standard stock M.2 HAT connector to get to the external PCIe lanes in the Pi 5. He had to apply external power to the PCI riser adapter to enable the port.
Through an experimental process of reverse engineering, Smart was able to connect the necessary pins and connect the Pi 5 with a PCI wireless network adapter and an old Firewire peripheral card.
During tests, Smart found that his circuit supports the speed of the PCI Gen 1 (PCI-E 1.0) implementation, but the Pi 5 bus itself theoretically supports the Gen2 (PCI-E 2.0) standard.
On September 28, 2023, the Raspberry Pi Foundation introduced the Raspberry Pi 5 (datasheet). The version of the microcomputer based on the BCM2712 chip with 8 GB of RAM costs $80, with 4 GB of RAM – $60. Independent tests of Raspberry Pi 5 have shown a significant increase in performance compared to Raspberry Pi 4, and the Wi-Fi module in the device is up to 3 times faster than that in Raspberry Pi 4.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a data sheet, provided details about this development, and revealed the block diagram of its new RP1 peripheral controller installed in the Raspberry Pi 5 microcomputer.
bbabo.Net