6 Feb
1998
6 Feb
'98
8:56 a.m.
My Mac Portable has 2MB RAM, 1MB soldered on and 1MB on
an expansion
board. This board has room for more chips, which, if added, would make
the board a total of 3MB. The problem is that the board has chips on
both sides, so that the little legs stay on the surface, instead of
going through. Can I technically solder on the chips by myself, or is it
unrealistic?
Wow... I know someone who actually tried to solder RAM chips into a
Macintosh computer, I think it was a Quadra model. It almost worked! He
didn't fry the motherboard as I thought it would, but it didn't work. What
really amazed me was that it worked at all after he removed the chips...
As for what you want to do, soldering RAM chips directly onto the
motherboard isn't a good idea. Even if it has empty spots for more RAM, the
support chips that are needed usually aren't there. The Mac 128K->512K
upgrade required adding an additional 74LS series chip(and a few other
small parts) to allow the CPU to address the extra RAM. For a Mac Portable,
the way to upgrade the RAM is to get a larger RAM card. Is your Portable a
backlit model? Looking at GURU 2.4.3(Newer Technologies GUide to Ram
Upgrades program), the Portable can handle 8MB of RAM, but the backlit
model can only take 7MB of RAM.
-JR http://members.tripod.com/~jrollins/index.html - Computers
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Lair/1681/ - Star Trek