From: Humphreys, David (david.humphreys_at_honeywell.com)
Date: Thu Apr 15 2004 - 06:19:12 PDT
The results thus far of the poll I conducted yesterday reveal that a new ROM board has the majority vote. I am not sure
if the people who contacted me directly also voted at newtontalk but the result is pretty clear - you want extra memory.
Then that is the direction I am going to take. The other projects must take a backseat as I have limited resources.
Project outline:
This modification will replace the existing ROM board with a new one that has 8MB of additional Flash memory. Combined
with the existing 4MB found on the MLB, this will give a total of 12MB of internal memory.
I had toyed with the idea of a totally Flash-based board but this would require copying the OS from the ROM chips - a
procedure I am not comfortable with legally. Therefore, an upgrade would require sending your original ROM board to me.
The ROM chips would be removed and fitted to the new board. This ensures that no code is compromised or revealed and
that each set has a legal owner.
What you get back is the original ROM's + 8MB of Flash.
No software drivers are required to access this extra memory. The OS is already set up to look for it at power-up.
This project has NOTHING to do with the EM300 board.
So, to maximize the memory:
On the 2x00 platform: Add a new ROM board
On the eMate: Add a new ROM board AND an EM300 board.
Note: This modification DOESN'T increase DRAM.The limit is 4MB due to the architecture of the machine. So, if you
currently have heap issues this mod won't fix them.
Also, the additional 8MB of Flash was designed around 4 x 2MB chips. These are obsolete but I can still get them through
brokers. However, I might be able to use higher density chips to reduce the chip count to 2 or even 1 and therefore
reduce the overall cost.
Don't ask me how much this will cost as I really don't know until I have done some investigating. I will keep things
reasonable though.
Thanks for YOUR support!
PCBman
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