Hugo,

Is the micron part a MT4LC4M16R6 (12 rows, 10 columns) or MT4LC4M16N3 (13 rows, 9 columns)?

http://www.micron.com/products/dram/edofpm/part.aspx?part=MT4LC4M16N3TG-5
http://www.micron.com/products/dram/edofpm/part.aspx?part=MT4LC4M16R6TG-5

If we can get the RAM we'll do the upgrades.

Stu

I'll wait to see how yours turns out, before I send/bring mine up.

From Hugo's link, http://www.9thtee.com/tivomemory.htm, it looks like it's the MT4LC4M16R6TG-5.

Yeah I looked at that picture and didn't see a normal looking part number. Then I went to the Micron page and found those two chips. Just didn't put 2 and 2 together.

Time to place an order methinks.

Indeed, if I could have 64mb I'd have an mDNS responder, a custom fileserver, and a few other goodies on the unit.

Sadly, I don't solder things which are that small, or I get a smoking pile of silicon.

I am totally interested too! I'll be very very happy to go up to 64Mb!

Except shipping to Australia costs US$25! i.e. more than the actual chips themselves Although it's not that much money, I have issues with expensive shipping.

Anyone in AU/NZ want to share shipping costs?

Greetings!

I refuse to let this thread pass into obscurity! To that end, I have ordered a few of the TiVo upgrade kits. LabRat will be experimented upon (I have already been in touch with one mad scientist in the US about this), and if it works I will be upgrading them all.

Some thoughts / questions for the more enlightened among us:

a) Given that the player is really only designed for 16MB (Mark2A), would there be much of a difference between / advantage in using 32, 48 and 64MB of RAM?

b) Is there any known physical limitation on the placement of the chips, limiting to one upgrade (32MB), or can three upgrades be added (64MB)?

The main limit will be a physical limit. Hugo mentioned that stacking them too high might hit the drive tray.

Also there is the tolerance level of stacking chips 4 high. I have done chips 3 high and it was a tough job. These are different memory chips though to what I was using. The ones I used didn't stack very well.

IMO unless you are running a big custom app, 32MB should be ample - even for yourself. Remember this will do much more than double the space available for the database. The original 16Mb includes the kernel, player software etc. leaving somewhere around 8Mb possibly (on a Mk2a, 4 for a Mk2) for the DB. So adding an extra 16Mb will at least triple your potential playlist/database size.

Cool!

I did some experimenting with an old laptop SIMM this weekend - using a hot air gun to pull some of the chips and then stacking them upon others. With a suitable iron, patience, and lots of flux, the second chip isn't too difficult(*) to solder. A third chip however is a bitch, as Shonky has alluded to. It's not even just getting the pins lined up and soldered - the CS pins need to be broken out of the stack. With only the second chip you just bend it up and solder the wire to it. You cannot easily do that when you need to stack a third chip on top - the best you can do it bend it straight out, but now you're soldering a 3D jigsaw with a 0.05" pitch. It adds a whole level of complexity and risk to a project that is already risky. I think I'll stick to 32MB when I do mine.

One issue that I haven't really resolved yet is how to straighten the pins effectively. Even after using an old DIP chip pin straightener to clamp and straighten the pins, they still have a curve to them. Any hints Shonky?

(*) "not too difficult" all being relative.

Is there any legitimacy to the idea of wiring the second, third, and fourth chips in sequence on a board, and then wiring that board to the onboard chip (the old daughterboard upgrade)?

Yes 32Mb should be enough anyway. I don't normally have too many problems with the extra pin. The main problems I have had are that the pins from the chip above don't physically reach the pins of the chip below. So you're stuck trying to build a solder bridge and that's not how soldering is supposed to work. Not sure whether this will be the case here though.

One issue that I haven't really resolved yet is how to straighten the pins effectively. Even after using an old DIP chip pin straightener to clamp and straighten the pins, they still have a curve to them. Any hints Shonky?

I usually use small needle nose pliers. You can usually grab ten or so pins at once and bend them all together straightening the bend that's already there.

Is there any legitimacy to the idea of wiring the second, third, and fourth chips in sequence on a board, and then wiring that board to the onboard chip (the old daughterboard upgrade)?

Legit yes. Crazy yes.

Apart from the EMC type issues there's mounting the daughter board plus wiring every single pin by hand from the original RAM chips to the daughter board. Something like 56 wires. Don't think so.

If you could figure out a neat way to attach a daughterboard directly to the RAM, you might be in with a chance. But that would be impossible to solder I believe.

Hm. Too bad there's not some sort of clamp on socket for something like this... guess it isn't needed all that often though eh?

Yep. You can get SMD test clips but they're expensive and also large.

I am surprised one of you soldering Gods hasn't removed All the memory and retro-fited a SODIMM Socket to your empeg's

then you could add as much ram as the system could take all the way from 8 to 1Gig
and it mounts horizonal so space wouldn't be too bad.

Photo of a SODIMM socket

Time to place an order methinks.

It's best pointed out that Hugo hasn't yet persuaded his dokt3red player to start the kernel properly, so folks might like to hold off until we can figure out why not, and whether there's a fundamental problem he hadn't thought of.

Peter

It's best pointed out that Hugo hasn't yet persuaded his dokt3red player to start the kernel properly

I didn't see anything about him trying it on a real player - only on a dead receiver since he has a Mk2. Has he tried it on a real and previously working Mk2a?

Although I said it, I didn't actually get around to ordering anything yet. pgrzelak said he ordered some though.

Thanks for the heads up.

Greetings!

I always try to be on the lunatic forefront / bleeding edge of things. If it works, great! If it doesn't work, I am sure that someone will figure it out sooner or later.

I'm with Paul. Most definitely this will be made to work!

Cheers

I guess I'm remembering the old days when chips would stick up a half inch off the board, and the pins were a couple of millimeters across. I seem to remember some sort of daughterboard upgrades for something that actually did snap on the original chip like that.

At the London meet tonight Hugo admitted to having got 16Mb of RAM working on a MK2a. It required a change to the kernel (and possibly even the player, can't remember), where he had put in a quick memory size = hardware revision hack in the past.

Hopefully Mark will be getting a nice email with some Hijack patches in in the future...

Sorry Hugo

P.S. Hugo was entertained to hear of Mark's "guess the player binary version by the file size" code...

See?!?! The memory upgrades have not even arrived with 2nd day air shipment, and already the problem is identified, and it is likely a patch will be issued. I knew that someone would work it out...

> At the London meet tonight Hugo admitted to having got 16Mb of RAM working on a MK2a.

That's sort of funny because I thought all MK2a's already had 16MB...

-brendan

That's sort of funny because I thought all MK2a's already had 16MB

Well spotted. I expect I probably meant that Hugo had added 16MB to a Mk2a...

Well spotted. I expect I probably meant that Hugo had added 16MB to a Mk2a...

Unless he did that in the train on the way down, I think you meant he upgraded a Mk2 (not 2a) to 16Mb, which is what he did last week!

Peter

Unless he did that in the train on the way down, I think you meant he upgraded a Mk2 (not 2a) to 16Mb, which is what he did last week!

Doh ! Well, we all know how talented he is...

Sorry to get everyone's hopes up. I suspect the issue over the fix to the kernel/player assuming memory size tells it something about which hardware revision it is running on still apply though.