128 Mb Memory Upgrade Options

[guylhem]

Hello

[crossposted to the C3000 forum]

Now I have a better understanding on hardware memory upgrades - good & bad news.

The bad news: the memory stick I opened was a 8 Mb TSOP40 (bad luck - it must be TSOP48 to be hardware compatible. Anyone feel likes opening his 128Mb memory stick and count memory chip pins to check if he/she's more lucky?)

The good news: with the chineese forum pics I could validate my ideas. See the following pics: the samsung chip is k9f2808u0c - google for that and you'll see the size matches the flash, and it is tsop48

http://photos6.flickr.com/7220607_3ed74e94a9_b.jpg
http://photos6.flickr.com/7220663_87696a44e5_b.jpg

Even better- noticed the empty spot below? You can solder a second tsop48 chip. However this may require additional hardware hacks + kernel changes to activate the 2nd bank.

My suggestion to anyone with good soldering skills and a C3000 : purchase a 128 Mb memory stick and (hopefully) find a 128 Mb nand chip inside. Transplant it to your Zaurus. It will be empty, so you will have to go to the diagnostic menu. Then restore a 128 Mb dump from a C1000 - voila, you know have a super 3000. The same should apply to any zaurus also using TSOP 48 chips.

The big question is - will it work (boot, etc.) ? Good question, so I investigated the boot loader from my 6000.

http://externe.net/zaurus/flash/nand/parts/6000L/boot.bin

The bad news: I may or may not do with a tc58100 - the bootloader just doesn't know it. Ie - it may work, but I don't want to take risk (my soldering skills are not that good to risk my zaurus life twice)

The good news: A Toshiba TC58DVG02AFT or a Samsung K9K1G08U0M are recognised by the bootloader (the default chip is TC58512FT or K9F1208U0M on a 6000, ie a 64 Mb/512MB chip)

For a Sl6000, this would require 1) flashing the rescue kernel with a special kernel that will know the flash is a 128 Mb 2) doing a nandbackup, exploding the nandbackup, increasing its size to 128 Mb 3) doing the above mentionned hack, only with a Toshiba TC58DVG02AFT or a Samsung K9K1G08U0M 4) restoring the hacked nandbackup 5) booting in the rescue kernel to reformat the 2nd partition and install an identical 1st kernel

See http://www.externe.net/zaurus/flash/nandmap.jpg for kernel informations.

All this sounds like a cool hack. Now someone please find me the chips (call toshiba USA - http://www.toshiba.com/taec/ I'm in France :-) I'm ready to get a Cxxxx just for the hacking purpose :-)

[ranma]

FYI, I was just looking at a C3000 p2rom:

The table of supported NAND chips starts at offset 0x1c4a0.

Supported are:
Toshiba TC58512FT (Maker 0x98, Device 0x76, 64MByte)
Toshiba TC58DVG02AFT (Maker 0x98, Device 0x79, 128MByte)
Samsung K9F1208U0M (Maker 0xec, Device 0x76, 64MByte)
Samsung K9K1G08U0M (Maker 0xec, Device 0x79, 128MByte)
Samsung K9F2808U0C (Maker 0xec, Device 0x73, 16MByte)
Samsung K9F5608U0C (Maker 0xec, Device 0x75, 32MByte)

Erase size 0x4000, block size 0x200, oob size 0x10 for all of them.
Another value (bank size?) is 0x4000000 for all of them except the Maker 0xec Device 0x76, where it is 0x8000000.

In theory any chip that has the right Maker/Device and matching parameters and is command set compatible should work.
I'd try looking at 128MB or 256MB usb sticks or 256MB/512MB CF cards for matching parts (My old 64MB usb stick uses a TC58512FT compatible TC58DVM92A1FT 64MByte TSOP48, but the sticks PCB has room for two chips).

HTH

[speculatrix]

FYI, I was just looking at a C3000 p2rom:

The table of supported NAND chips starts at offset 0x1c4a0.

Supported are:
Toshiba TC58512FT (Maker 0x98, Device 0x76, 64MByte)
Toshiba TC58DVG02AFT (Maker 0x98, Device 0x79, 128MByte)
Samsung K9F1208U0M (Maker 0xec, Device 0x76, 64MByte)
Samsung K9K1G08U0M (Maker 0xec, Device 0x79, 128MByte)
Samsung K9F2808U0C (Maker 0xec, Device 0x73, 16MByte)
Samsung K9F5608U0C (Maker 0xec, Device 0x75, 32MByte)

Erase size 0x4000, block size 0x200, oob size 0x10 for all of them.
Another value (bank size?) is 0x4000000 for all of them except the Maker 0xec Device 0x76, where it is 0x8000000.

In theory any chip that has the right Maker/Device and matching parameters and is command set compatible should work.
I'd try looking at 128MB or 256MB usb sticks or 256MB/512MB CF cards for matching parts (My old 64MB usb stick uses a TC58512FT compatible TC58DVM92A1FT 64MByte TSOP48, but the sticks PCB has room for two chips).

HTH

I managed to find mention that an old Sony 128M memory stick - quite an old variant - should contain one, so I ask on the local Freecycle mailing list and someone let me have one. I recently bought a black-and-decker version of the dremel, so I will grind off the broken RAM chip I have in my Tosa in the hope I can clean up the board to make room for a new ram chip, and also try soldering on more flash.