Ram Upgrade, some questions :) Options

[Da_Blitz]

as i said i cant get on to the samsung website to double check the data sheets, should be able to get my backup of them tonight so be patient, the kernel will need a patch but it should be trivial to add/write

that part number looks like aflash chip to me, you would have not been ablee to find it as you added the temprature range and speed identifiers to it as well, try stripping the last letter off the end one by one until you find it

the ram chips are under that big metal thing however the chips have to be the same number of pins and pin compatible, there is a work around if they arent but its not pretty, the plus side is that you would be able to do up to 1 G if there is space

usb hub is doable if you can find one thats small, but you will lose usb client without some clever hackery. just post back for details

for big battries i recomend the big psp power packs from www.liksang.com they are 5 v and correct polarity and are 4.2AH each even thogh its external it means you can hot swap them for war driving action

i think you might run out of space (as will i) but i was thinking of getting a machining guy to do an aluminium bottom plate to replace the exsisting bottom from cad plans, that way i could use it as a heat sink for the cpu and make the internal area biger (but also bieng bigger overall) this would allow me to pu a full usb port on the back and redirect the power so it can do 5v @ 0.5 A, all i have to do is fnd someone to do it and mesure and draw up the bottom plate, might even do the entire case.

[maslovsky]

EDIT:what about the kernel patch i willn`t add more ram if i know that i will have no benfit from it.
the thing i can`t undertand is why the kernel doesn`t support 128MB and need a patch.(but it`s just me:) )
Uriel

The patch for C7x0/C860 is available here:


http://cacko.oesf.org/downloads/128Mb/sdra...ory-128Mb.patch

But it will not work for CxK.

[maslovsky]

EDIT:what about the kernel patch i willn`t add more ram if i know that i will have no benfit from it.
the thing i can`t undertand is why the kernel doesn`t support 128MB and need a patch.(but it`s just me:) )
Uriel

The patch for C7x0/C860 is available here:


http://cacko.oesf.org/downloads/128Mb/sdra...ory-128Mb.patch

But it will not work for CxK.

[Da_Blitz]

The reason why it needs a patch (as was asked) is because there is no autodetection of memory, when you plugg a dimm into a pc it has an eeprom with all the config settings in it and the bios auto configures it, on embedded hardware there is no point in doing this as you dont expect the hardware to change so you just hard code it

hope that helps

Edited: version 1.1 - Patched to 1.1 because word "Patch" was mispelt "pathc"

[urielka]

the chip i found is not under the Metal Thing so it is the NAND? i don`t think it`s coz there is another Samsung chip there(i will take a second look just to be sure).

about the battery:
i plan to replace the regular bater with my supperior Litium Polymer battery.
one cell of LiPo is 3.7V so i need one cell of 3.7V 4.5A which is abit smaller than a AA batt
the problem is that a LiIon charger can`t charge a LiPo cell so i will need to put a circuit with the battery that will charge it with LiIon input(will be slower than charge it with a external LiPo charger:)).

about the patch:
wow! all this for using more mem?
when i programmed a OS with x86 ASM i didn`t need any mem detection (no 64 bit)
ok i should check that patch but i don`t familiar with ARM-ASM.

about the Usb-Hub :
it is small enough cost my less than 10$(in israel) it will take some mods to make it smaller so i t will be good,it`s battery-power so instead the batteris it will use the main battery with a switch to turn it off for battery-saving(even that i will have at least 2.5 times more power).

Da Blitz:
how is yours moding doing?
did anything? i want to see if there other things i want to do.

the first thing which is the simplest will be the super-battery

Uriel

[maslovsky]

about the patch:
wow! all this for using more mem?
when i programmed a OS with x86 ASM i didn`t need any mem detection (no 64 bit)
ok i should check that patch but i don`t familiar with ARM-ASM.

Zaurus is not a PC, it lacks a lot of hardware features, which makes it cheeper to produce. Why bother with memory size auto-detection if the size of the memory is known in advance?

It doesn't even has a built-in hardware clock.

[urielka]

it was just a comment cheel
as soon i can i will start my mods

[Ragnorok]

We're performing RAM upgrade on C7x0/C860 for some time now.

- Wowzers!!!

[Da_Blitz]

can we get a link for the lipo battries, in exchange i will see if i can dig up a link for the 100AH 12V litium ion packs i found online once, it was the size of a car battery only thinner and wieghed about 1Kg, you might want to use that instead

as for modding i am very busy at the moment (but wont be in 3 weeks time) and still have to get my site up to put the pics up (wont take me long just have to find the time), in the mean time i did create a thread about posible hacks, there were about 7 or so and i have a couple of others i have yet to mention but i would like to see the 2700g video card hack done, i may have found a way to do it

my first one will probely be the custom case as i damadged the case by droping it from above head hight accedently, just glad it had a metal top, because i also want to put in a usb hub, i might recomend you find a way to generate 5v from the battery and feed it independently of the Z's power regulator becuase it isnt very capable and cant do more than 100ma

here is the links for the hacks: http://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=15093

[urielka]

i saw that!
pm me info about the 2700g i realy interest in that!
the usb hub will be runing from the Zaurus battery don`t worry the first thing is get the super lipo battery 3.7V 4.5A the smallest and 3.7V 9A if i will find it.
links will take some time as i need to find a good site coz the one i saw aren`t so good.

[Da_Blitz]

as i said i am looking at resizing the bottom half of my zaurus's case, this means i can put in a USB hub/ cardreader (so i can have 2 SD and 2 CF ) and a larger battery. it also allows me to do bluetooth throght USB rather than serial which IMHO is a better way to do it as it means less work on out part (no trying to find the serial port and get it working)

post the links up anyway, finding things like this is what i am good at, for eg did you know there is a 4800mAh LiIon battery pack for the e800 and e830.

for the 2700g post to the hacks thread link above as thats where it should be discussed

[bsaunder2002]

maslovsky,
1- did you have to run any extra traces or was it a simple remove old BGA memory and add the new ones?
ie- remove old BGA's
add new BGA's
reboot with old kernel, works but only 64mb
recompile kernel with patches
reboot with new kernel, 128mb?

2- do you know if this type of memory can be used on older Z's like the SL-5500(which also uses BGA)

3- did you do an battery life impact study?

4- do you know of a site where we can buy those mem chips?

Bill

[benplaut]

so... the ram chips are in sockets, not soldered to the board?

-Curious

[bsaunder2002]

so... the ram chips are in sockets, not soldered to the board?

-Curious

NOPE that's the problem. BGA stands for ball grid array. (If I understand) It's a whole bunch of little balls that are(can be) seperate from the chip and the motherboard. My understanding is that the motherboard and the chip have little divets where the ball fits in. BUT they still use solder. I think the process uses a reflow oven and it heats the solder just enough to attach to the balls/chip/motherboard and then the excess solder is washed away.

MOST of this is probably wrong...ask an expert, Im not.

So imagine very tiny things hidden way into the center of the chip. If you don't use their process, there's basically no other way to do it.

(yes people make there own reflow ovens but that's just emulating the official process)

Modifying the board after its completed is called "rework" and if I'm correct, it's gotten harder and harder and harder with each new generation of chip packaging (dip, smt, bga).

Search google for "bga rework" if you wanna know how hard this is...
sim

[bam]

I have access to a reflow oven(programmmable) however quick question does the board have components on both sides?if the answer is yes this may be a problem. And we would have to find out the profile of the reflow oven to run it good. So if we find a way around it, I can start playing with a c1000(I was going to buy one to play with pdaxrom anyways. What about more ROM say 256megs? If we could get a working version with 256megs of ram and rom this would be great, although I would settle for 128mb of ram.