In this chaotic and comically candid video, Chris Edwards Restoration takes viewers on a hilarious yet informative journey to upgrade his custom Amiga 4000’s Raspberry Pi 5 with a budget NVMe hat. The goal? Add a 512GB NVMe SSD to the Pi running Windows 11 ARM, which manages the LCD, fans, and RGB lighting in his “Purple Amiga” project. The result? A whole lot of head-scratching, boot failures, and fan malfunctions.
Chris begins by swapping out a 4GB Raspberry Pi for a beefier 16GB model, aiming for faster boot times and more headroom for Windows. Enter the $12 S2PI M2280 PCIe-to-NVMe hat—a tiny add-on that promises SSD support but delivers a full day of firmware wrangling and BIOS voodoo instead. As expected, nothing works out of the box. Chris has to enable PCIe support via config.txt, reflash the EEPROM, and pray to the Raspberry gods.
The Raspberry Pi NVMe adapter does blink… occasionally. But Windows either doesn’t boot or cooks the board because the fan fails to spin. Switching between the 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB Pis only adds to the confusion. Fan behavior changes depending on OS, hardware, and maybe the phase of the moon. Meanwhile, Chris fries chicken and drops screwdrivers, all while trying not to lose his sanity—or his spare ribbon cable.
Despite hours of effort and deep-fried snacks, success proves elusive. Eventually, Chris settles for the working but slower 4GB Pi, noting he needs something reliable for World of Commodore 2025.
