SPCR

from what i know cards go in at an angle, are pushed down and screwed in.

so if i were to put in a full sized card, pushed it down as far as it would go and held it there somehow (it would be at an angle, not flat like it should be), would it still work?

Msata and mini pcie use the same connector but they are not interchangeable. It would not work.

The pins on msata and mini pcie are not the same, while they have the same they are not in the same order, so no it wont work.

But in rare ocasions there are pcie n msata ports that do work, but come by design like that, but i just seen one laptop with that feature, and all new ones i dont see that anymore.

i believe there are slots that are compatible with both.

the real question i guess is whether the pins are still making contact if the card isn't all the way down, any thoughts?

edit: i think some lenovo laptops can 'switch' modes.

oh well, i was looking at an itx mb, chances are though it won't do msata.

it would've been amazing though, using a pico the only wire would be the 12v cpu one.

Not sure what motherboard you have in mind, but here is some options,

GIGABYTE GA-B85N LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
According to the specs has an msata port.

ASUS H97I-PLUS LGA 1150 Intel H97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
The new haswell iteration has an m.2 port, so you could use in theory a Crucial M500 240GB SATA 6Gbps M.2 Internal SSD (but crosscheck the length).

Intel BLKDH77DF LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard - OEM
Sadly intel is getting out of the motherboard market, but this one has the port that is pcie and msata (crosscheck it though, its just on specs).

thanks but unfortunately i was looking at amd am1 boards, which from what i can tell all have half sized and i assume pcie only slots. it's still a very new platform though so who knows what will happen in the coming weeks and months.

fingers crossed.

minipci express extension cable.

but not to a msata drive, as others have said.