This is a walkthrough of the process.
Do NOT try this unless all of the following criteria are met.
1. You don't care about the Warranty of either the device or the card.
2. You have a single screwdriver that will fit the screws of the Zaurus (they are all pretty much the same).
3. You have a soldering iron and skills necessary to use it.
4. You are really so driven to do it that you have to do it.
Do NOT complain to me, Sharp, your vendor or anyone if you break it badly.
Quite probable pitfalls..
1. You have chosen a card that has slightly higher power requirements than the Microdrive.. will cause failures immediately. Note, a working card in the CF slot does NOT mean a working card inside the Zaurus.
2. Your card may fail much quicker than the Microdrive - Trisoft had a card fail within 1 week of fitting it.
3. You may well strip the screws on the PCB of the Zaurus when removing it.. those robots at Sharp screw em in hard and you MUST have a screwdriver that fits exactly.
4. If you are particularly 'cack-handed' or have a screw driver that doesn't fit then the screw driver may slip and gouge a fairly important part of the unit.
5. You could crack the board.
6. You could zap components with static off your body.
7. You could seriously frustrate yourself
OK.. enough of the warnings, here is the nitty gritty.
Remove all obvious components from the base unit..
* CF Blank, Battery Cover, Battery, Stylus, SD Card Blank an Service Console Gromit from the back of the unit
Remove all the screws. Be particularly careful not to lose the screws at the base of the battery compartment inside the unit.
Note all screws are exactly the same so there is no need to ensure that you have them noted for replacement in the same holes.
With the utmost care remove the back housing.. it may seem to come free from the side nearest the SD slot first. Once it is free like this lift the side nearest the battery compartment (the other side is anchored by the earphone socket) and the back should come free without undue force.
Take a close look at the main board. The two Marked A hold the board onto the mount. The two Marked B hold the CF housing onto the other side of the board. At some point you need to take them all out, if they will easily unscrew at this point then do it. If not I will suggest a tactic after removing this board.
Now note the area marked C, this varies from Zaurus to Zaurus. some may have a wire soldered here with enough slack to allow removal of the board. If as in this case there is a Copper Foil strip soldered to the unit then you must unsolder it before removing the board.
Note that each screw has a 'copper track' artwork arrow beside it on the PCB, you will use this to reference their replacement later.
Fold back the board which should now come out quite easily being extremely careful not to damage the ribbon cables attaching it to the screen and keyboard.
remove the two flat screws from the SD controller daughter board and remove the daughter board. If you need to apply pressure to the board to do this use something as a stanchion on the other side of the board. I simply placed the CF blanking plate under that area whilst doing this.
This should now lift off.
The next step is to remove the plastic housing for the CF card which has 2 clips and 2 hooks and if you didn't remove them earlier 2 screws (previously marked as B ). If you had trouble eariler then I suggest that you get the SD Card blank, apply a little tape to it and adhere the tape to the Microdrive so that it holds the SD Card blank under the area where the screw is. You should be able to apply a little more force with the screwdriver now without fear of straining the board.
Now simply replace the Microdrive with your chosen card...
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Now reassemble in reverse order, cross your fingers and do the software engineering bit (I class partitioning the device etc in that area).
-Andy
