[NTLK] eMate 300 Memory Upgrade

[NewtonTalk]

> Duplicating the layout is probably not a huge problem these days - it's
locating compatible RAM and Flash memory. I don't think that stuff has been
made in about a decade and a half.

Folks, hold your horses for a while. As I recently mentioned on the list,
I've bought everything David had left from his SER001 and his eMate upgrade
board projects. 

David also kindly mailed me a zip file that, as far as I can judge it,
contains everything I'd need for having new PCBs made. I can't open most of
these files, but that's not surprising since I do not have any PCB software
on my computer yet. But there are folders named Gerber, Plot, PCB etc. So
I'm inclined to think that as to having new boards made, I already have what
is required.

You probably can't believe this, but my life has been so busy recently that
David's box has been sitting on my desk for weeks. So I don't know yet
what's in there. I think David mentioned unpopulated boards. I could use
those to rig up a 2nd edition prototype. The eMate memory upgrade basically
consists of three memory chips. You can buy memory chips today. Most likely
not those needed for the board, but so what. The chips you CAN buy will
provide much more memory than the original chips and have more pins.
However, as long as voltage, current and timing are similar, which they very
often are, all it depends on is the pinout. You can easily turn a 16MB RAM
into a 4MB RAM by bending two address pins up and wiring them to ground. The
eMate wouldn't know it's working with a chip whose memory size we just
shrunk (Honey, I shrunk the chips...).

Once everything works, we can adjust the data files I have from David and
have new boards made.

Cheers

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de