ZimaBoard Custom SATA Y Cable

ZimaBoard is a single board server with a dual Gigabit ethernet connection, dual SATA III and PCIe 4x ports, (ect.) offering a lot of possibilities with low power consumption. Comparing with alternatives for example the Raspberries, it's within the same range looking the performance, the consumption and also the price (including all of the stuff You have to buy for a similar project for them), but here everything is included in a passively cooled housing with a nice design, You just take out of the box and in a 5 minutes it's running. (I have to mention that here I talk about home server projects).

Unfortunately is harder to buy in Europe, You have to pay a lot for transpot, customs, wait for it, ect. I succeed to get one here in Europe, but originally cames with a singel SATA III cable. You can also buy an Y SATA cable, it costs nearly nothing but here comes the same difficulties. Untill You get it because the upper mentioned problems, it costs a lot also in money, also in time, so I decided that while I wait for the ZimaBoard, I plan and build a custom cable.

Complications cames just as I started the planning, since neither on the official page nor on forums I could get any information about the pinout and type of the SATA Power Connector of the ZimaBoard. All I could find that they call it SATA Power on the official webpage pinout diagrams, but this name is deceptive because nothing to do with the well konwn SATA Power cables.

1. Any SATA 3 6 Gb/s Y cable, I was using here the Delock SATA 3 Cable for 2 HDD, but You can use similar, also with Floppy or other kind of power connectors
2. JST-PH 4p 2 mm Female connector (2 mm stands for the distance between the pins, it's 8,4x4 mm otherwise)
3. Metal connector for JST-PH house 4 pieces (since mine came without the metal wire connector)

Crimping tool or soldering device and some piler (I choose the second one since I don't have a JST Crimper)

First of all, I had to find out the pinout, so I've measured the voltages across the ZimaBoad SATA Power port. It has similar pinout as the Floppy Power just inverted (as You can see on the first picture), maybe this is the reason why the official ZimaBoard SATA cable has to be twisted too because they somehow inverted the port accidentally. You don't have to do this step since I did it.

In the next steps I just cut down the cables in a straight line from my Floppy Connector and soldered the metal connectors and plugged them in the correct order in the JST-PH 4p connector, and it works perfectly.

After all I decided to do this with my Floppy Power to SATA Power cable and then I just connected to my Delock SATA cable, but You can use any combination of cables as long as You keep the correct order of cables that You plug in the JST-PH 4 pin 2 mm connector