Memory board installation manual online

OK, I've fixed that and re-uploaded the manual.

pca

In the meantime I upgraded my player to 64MB and it seems to work great.
If someone wants me to do the memory upgrade on his player, I'll do it for you. I upgraded three players until now, two of them with the stack method. I'll also build tuner kits or add the illumination buttons. I'm located in Switzerland.

Two empeg units are upgraded now. With the first one I followed the manual as is. When I tested the unit, it didn't work (the memory test failed). The problem turned out to be incomplete solder joints in some daugher board holes.
With the second unit I found a better solution that solves two problems:
1) Board alignment
2) Complete solder joints (first time - every time)
The way to get it would be to melt some solder on just those pads that connect to daughter board. I created small semi-circlular balls on each of these pads. This way the board aligns naturally (of course I still have to hold it in place, but now it doesn't shift) and I don't have to do a lot of solder "mixing" inside the connection hole to make a perfect connection.
Patrick, if you could put this tip into the manual, that'll be great.

Clothspins (the spring style) work wonders for holding the two boards together, tight and in alignment.

Cheers

I think you will get some work soon

Check you PM!

bye

I've successfully upgraded two mk2a units to 64MB. I've had some difficulty with a mk2 unit upgrade. Likely poor technique and a Grappa problem A big thanks to Patrick for a fun 4th of July weekend!

-Sean

Hi Alex25,

Thanks for the memory upgrade. It was a fast and perfect service. . (typical Swiss quality)

I can recommand your professional soldering work to the Empeg community.

bye

I have finally gotten time to install this memory board and I must say that it is a real professional quality kit.

I do, however have an issue. I have soldered everything into place and checked for proper continuity on the major test pads and everything seems to be working - although the memory doesn't show on boot.

I noticed the boot9.rom, but since I'm on a MK2A player, I assume that I don't need it (being that the instructions for it are under the MK2 player section).

Is there anything else I need to check for other than making sure that the pads are all soldered?

Got a recent version of Hijack installed? A log of the boot would be helpful to see what is going on.

hmm, I just upgraded the hijack about 2 weeks ago via the JEmplode interface. Unfortunately, I just got to work, so I can't get back to it until this afternoon (Eastern USA time). I cannot tell you which version it's at.

If it was the latest version as of 2 weeks ago then thats fine.

I had that problem at first, so I double checked all my solder connections, and had some that had not made a good connection. I would go over those again, to make sure they have contact with main board.

I was wondering if anyone had a copy of this? I have someone who will install it for me but am on a kinda tight schedual since he will be leaving our company in the next week. Thanks!

Might seem like a dumb question...but where can I get one of the memory expansion boards here in the USA? I can't seem to access the PCATS site as it requires a username and password.

Send a private message to pca, don't know if Patrick still has any kits available though.

Hi.

I sold out of the final batch of memory boards long ago, and there won't be any more. There simply wasn't/isn't enough demand for them. Sorry.

The pcats.co.uk site has been down for quite a while due to circumstances beyond my control. It's a long story

Pca

Most unfortunate.

That said, I think the people that used the stacked memory method had fewer problems in the long run. I had two like that (a mk2 and a mk2a) and they're both working well.

Ok, one more quick question...where does one find the RAM chips?

TiVo S1 memory chips were the same I believe.

IIRC, I believe that Hugo also sent a load of them to Stu at Eutronix.