[NTLK] eMate 300 Memory Upgrade

Randy Glenn randy.glenn at gmail.com
Wed Apr 4 22:29:04 EDT 2018


A larger part might work. From the research I was doing yesterday, the RAM
chips used in the eMate card have 12 row address bits and 8 column address
bits, with the lower 8 row bits sharing pins with the column bits. Two
strobe signals are used to indicate whether the address present is a row or
column address. A part with 12 or more row bits and 8 or more column bits
might work - the problem with an exact replacement is that the 1Mx16 chips
I found still being sold, all use 10 row and 10 column address bits. I
don't think the eMate will be able to see all of that memory.

If you have a schematic in that ZIP file that you're willing to share, I
can start checking into alternatives.

On Wed, Apr 4, 2018 at 7:02 PM, NewtonTalk <newtontalk at pda-soft.de> wrote:

> > 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
>
>
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