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8MB upgrade hack for Palm V
An Onimous Cow Herd writes "Beef up your superslim
Palm V with an 8 MB upgrade card (and violate your
warranty too...). " My PalmPro is looking more dated
each day.
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I was wondering if there has been anyone out the who has upped the RAM on the Pilot Pager card, or knows a link to someone who has?
I love my good ol' 5000, and wish the new ones would support a pager!
Dan Williams
williamsdr@acm.org
Having had trouble getting a clean reliable solder on component made after 1970 ( because theyre so darned small ) How on earth do you get a bead of solder that small? Any tips?
Liquid solder flux, and lots of it.
You can get it at any good electronics supply shop.
...that all it takes to up the Palm V to 8mb, is to reset a couple of jumpers???
In other words, the unit has always been capable of 8MB, but 3com deliberately crippled it to less?
Is that, in fact, what the article is saying?
Harry
Anyone know where I can find info on how to do
a similar memory upgrade for a Palm III? I think
that it would change the whole way that I use the
thing if it even had 4M instead of two. The TRG
boards look great, but I can't see paying more for
one than I did for the Pilot in the first place!
no... nothing will ever compete with the 48 series... I'm certain there's a "take over the world" function buried somewhere in the dark recesses of its ROM, it's just not mentioned in the reference manual ;)
It's OK, but really does not go into the art of Surface-Mount work. For that , liquid flux is essential as is very fine , multi-core solder.
You have to have a good tip, a chisel tip with a small hollow carved into the face works well. You place the part by tacking the corners, then coat the leads with liquid flux, clean and re tin the tip of the iron. Then in a smooth, continuous motion, you drag the tip, flat side down, across all the leads, applying solder to the leading edge at the same time. The solder flux keeps the surface tension high so you dont short all the leads together. It's best to practice this on an old board a few times.
I fill mine up not with apps but with data storage. I have a whole bunch of the best articles culled from years of reading Usenet, for example. That's a couple megs there. Not only is it good for passing the time when I'm eating or waiting for something, etc. -- always good to refresh my memory about things -- but also when I'm doing research (okay, I'm unusual) it's really great to be able to pop up something relevant instantly, wherever I am, whenever an idea occurs to me or I hear about something.
Do a search on the Palm V, and you'll see this has NEVER been posted. Do you know anything about the Palm V? It wasn't even released a month and a half ago. You might consider doing some research before posting something blatantly wrong.
Shame on you! ;-)
Seriously, from what I can gather in the instructions, all it takes is to resolder a few traces/jumpers to, essentially, *TELL* the Palm V that it should use the 8 megs that it already has.
I other words, Palm ships them with 8 megs, but cripples them deliberately before shipping?
Am I getting this right?
HarryZ
That's sort of the whole point of uClinux, to run on microcontrollers without any hardware for memory management (which is almost all current microcontrollers). The uClinux port to PalmPilot would run on the PalmIII unmodified (that is, without a TRG card) or the PalmV if we had access to the appropriate FLASH programming information. TRG was very supportive of the uClinux project, and not only donated their excellent memory cards to the developers, but wrote a custom boot/FLASH loader for the uClinux kernel at our request!
(consider that a thumbs up for TRG and their products from the uClinux team).
And, no, don't blame 3com for us not knowing how to program the FLASH in their newer devices, we've not asked them for that info.
D.Jeff Dionne http://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/uClinux
The reason 55% of us use windows to visit this site is becasue we do it on company time.... I have linux at home, MS at work.
Uh no. In additional to the jumpers, you
gotta replace the 2 meg chip with an 8 meg chip.
As to people asking why 3com isn't shipping
Palm 5's with 8megs, I'm guessing because it
would affect battery life too much.
I'm guessing that the reason the p5 didn't
come with 8 megs in the first place is that
battery life would be affect too much?
4 megs would be cool, but since the chips only
come in 2 meg or 8 meg flavors, there isn't
enough room on the motherboard to fit another
2meg chip.
Approximately half of the article describes how to remove the memory chip that is installed in the Palm V and then replace it with the bigger 8Mb version.
It's not the best written article I've ever seen but the guy's not a native english speaker and overall it is understandable with good pictures.
So basically - you are getting this wrong...
Not quite. The HP-15C is the best calculator ever made. Mine is close to 15 years old, I've changed the batteries maybe two or three times, and every key on the keyboard works perfectly despite using it every day. It is basically indestructible.
DK
kacher@sedsystems.ca
No, you need to change the mem chip.
Why the heck would they deliberately disable more expensive stuff that they put in there?!
He changed out the chip as well. Its a pretty jacked up translation so perhaps its not clear but look at the photos.
Look again. The 2 meg chip had to be swapped out for an 8 meg chip. That's not the easiest thing to do, considering the size of the pins and the proximity to the CPU.
Did you even _look_ at the page referenced? Clearly, the guy did some _hairy_ soldering on a vary small, tight space to replace one DRAM chip with another.
Remember back when an anonymous coward said to pay close attention to the clipped leads on the V's memory chip?
Glad you did.
Not all A/C's are evil.
P.S. Modems are on the way, and they're beautiful..
**A/C heads for the beach, to watch the night surf**
**A/C is feeling very happy.**
When you replace the screen, pay close attention to the socket that the ribbon cable plugs into. There are two prongs, top and bottom. Pull these to the left (away from the center of the mother board)
The ribbon cable will just about fall out of the slot.
Put the new one in, and push both prongs back in.
The prongs are actually one peice of plastic, so they need to go out and in together.
By the way-- A IIIx screen will work in any backlit palm except a V.
that's something I'd like to understand... I bought myself a new palm earlier this week and found myself looking at a Palm V and a IIIx at Staples, loving the lithium ion battery and slim case of the V, but buying a IIIx because... well.. it has more expandability and double the RAM. Odd that their best model isn't the best technically.
I also found myself at Staples looking at a IIIx and the 'V'... and bought a 'V'. Know why? 3com built the PDA I was waiting for (the 'V' is my first). Its small enough to put in my shirt pocket ALL DAY and the battery will last week+ thanks to limited memory. I now have 1000+ contacts with all their notes in my pocket instead of on my desk... where they belong.
The memory chip used costs $15 (that's FIFTEEN for those uncapable of reading numbers) from my local electronics supply place. NEC is phasing the chip out, so it wasn't in stock and it'll probably never be. Toshiba and Samsung make a similar chip, but those weren't in stock either..
Well, it seems the Palm IIIx might be capable of quite a large memory upgrade too. Given that my Palm IIIx already has a plethora of accessories (a Minstrel+ with lotsa emails and web pages, a GPS system with Quo Vadis and lotsa maps, along with my happy collection of pics for Image Viewer)the included 4 megs doesn't seem like much. Considered that the 4 megs on the IIIx are really two 2 meg chips, perhaps I can swap the two 2 meg (actually 16Mbit) chips with two 8 meg (64Mbit) chips and get a nice 16 megs of memory on my IIIx (good for a HUGE collection of stuff). Just an idea. While I'm at it, maybe it's possible to replace the flash chip with a 4 meg version, somehow restore the OS, and use Flash Pro to get another 3 megs.. and with the expansion slot, ANOTHER 8 megs with the TRG board. That's 27 megs total!! Anyone interested, please help me out since I don't have a source to buy DRAMs and such in single unit volumes. In the meantime, I'll be disassembling the IIIx and figuring out what's necessary to make this work...
that the inside of the Palm V looks like Al's handlink for Quantum Leap? Especially with the area on the upper left looking like an indentation in the silicon...
I was beginning to think I was the last one in the free world that still had a 5000! ZD-Net called them antiques the other day...
Posted by Bocharn:
I don't believe in this, but could it be that they
waited for people to hack it for free, so they can buy or get the technology for free?
Seems like 3Com techs are no good.
Hmmmm.
Posted by DonR:
Really? I love my PalmV. I don't drive a SUV. I'm a unix sysadmin. I don't think I've ever played golf (besides miniature golf). Yeah, it was expensive, but now I can fit in the front pocket of my jeans. The slim size actually allows me to make much more use of it than I did my PalmPersonal. I haven't decided yet if I'll try upgrading it to 8mb ram, as the battery issues haven't been quite worked out yet.
---
Donald Roeber
Back in aughty-aught, when through hole parts were more commonly used, the "zero-ohm" resistor came about as an inexpensive way to install jumpers with automatic insertion equipment. They had a single black band on them. I was told the story of some old salters pulling a young tech's leg, telling him this zero ohm resistor had a 5% tolerance, haw haw.
Bassai Dai!
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Check out this editorial I wrote about the PalmV and what's wrong with it.
... is 3com.com. *grin*
Funny thing is, the domain hitting this editorial the most
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
Give the guy a break! Immediately after mentioning the resistors, he notes "I'm no technician excuse my translation!" I thought that he got the idea across, and the images showed the process, too.
--Phil (Not that I'll be trying this--I don't have a Palm pilot.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Especially since it's obvious that the PalmV could have easily had 8M rather than 2.
Personally, I don't see a need for a thinner Palm at the cost of upgradability. What 3Com really needs to do is add the battery features to the 3x and drop the V. Or at least bump the V up to 8M.
I can't _ever_ imagine using up 48MB.
Hide this quote somewhere on a long term system, and schedule it to pop up in 3 years time. :-)
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
The Palm 5000, Pro, and III run for about two months of normal use on two alkaline AAA batteries. The Palm V runs for about a month on its tiny internal Lithium Ion battery and recharges in just minutes, even automagically taking a small charge every time you link it with your PC. See 3com's Specs for details.
The betteries in the Everex Freestyle Windows CE handheld device are good for only about 8 hours.
If you read the article more closely and study the pictures, you will see that in addition to changing the jumpers, an entire chip was replaced as well.
Shawn Asmussen
Think of the 0 Ohm chip resistor as a jumper. Of
course even jumpers have a non-zero resistance,
but this value is small enough to be neglected.
All intelligently designed hardware leaves room for improvement. When they come out with a newer version with more RAM, different screen, faster proc, or whatever, it's a lot nicer if they can keep the same already designed and proven motherboard to connect the newer/different components. My motherboard can move faster than my CPU...that is so I can upgrade later and not have to buy a new MB as well. And you better believe it can support more RAM than I have...
Of course, the room that they leave for improvement can be used by intrepid soles such as this one in Japan.
Also, as has been mentioned, the Palm V is only superior to the Palm IIIx cosmetically. If you are interested in the raw tech, go with IIIx.
--Lenny
Many are complaining that the new Palm's should have had 8 MB anyway. I'm not sure that I agree. I know plenty of people who don't need anymore than the 1 MB that comes on their Palm Pro. Those apps are *tiny*, so it doesn't take much room to load up.
I know that there are always things that you could find to fill up the extra RAM, but I'm not sure that it really adds to the usefulness of the product. mp3? Get a Rio instead, or wait for an integration sort of affair. This thing wasn't meant to replace a Discman, anyway.
The reason the Palms are successful is that they are well designed with a clean, efficient, and highly usable UI in a compact package. The hardware doesn't need to be blazingly fast, since those apps aren't exactly proc-hogs anyway. Most of what sets the Palms apart is the software. Sure you can get a stacked WinCE machine, but what good is that? I don't want to try and run WordCE...the palmtop is not the best platform for that kind of work. MS and others are trying to push palmtops as "really small PC's", but I don't think such a product is terribly useful. 3com has the right idea, as far as I am concerned...
wondering if he will get flamed,
--Lenny
The memory upgrade is nice, but can you also make one of those memory boards the uCLinux folks put together that are needed to support memory management and a linux kernel?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Gag/retch.
I had a Casio WinCE PDA with the chicklet keyboard about a year ago. It wasn't small enough to be portable, and wasn't useful as a laptop. That, and double-tapping icons and dragging/dropping things with a plastic stylus is not what I call a usable user interface. The keys on the keyboard are so small you can only type with 2-3 fingers at a time. Just horrid.
By contrast, I've had my Palm IIIx for 4 days. It took me about 5 minutes to learn the arcane letter strokes, and now I can scribble on that thing as fast as I can write.
And it runs Linux! (Well, maybe. Soon. I hope.)
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
386, 486, Celeron.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Here is a great soldering HOWTO that shows the way to make fine connections. Good reading.
the more memory you have, the faster your batteries get sucked dry.
Starting to feel like my fave PDA might be a dying breed
Don't believe the hype. Look at the market share numbers, 3Com still gets tons of new adopters.
1.5 months ago? The Palm V was only announced like 3 weeks ago.
its for geeks who want a smaller sized Pilot with a rechargeable battery. Those two things are more useful to me than 4MB of RAM.
;)
2MB of RAM is enough to hold my VT100 emulator, Cisco router configurator, web browser and plenty o' games, not to mention Tricorder!
As far as I can tell, Palm can't come close to this in either capacity or price.
Not that I'm about to scrap my Palm Pro and do this. If we could ever get an open OS on one of those machines, though, I'd go for it.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Put an open, hackable operating system on the box instead of CE and I'd buy it in a minute and deal with the battery problems.
Now, if I could just get the hardware documentation...
What would I put in 48MB? Maps, for one thing. A nice detailed S.F. bay and surrounding communities map with searching would be cool. The rest could be applications and maybe "web channels" for reading news offline.
You give me the space, I'll find a use for it.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
But 48M? That could be interesting.
Someone says that a PCMCIA adapter is in the works. That's OK, but I'd really like to have all of that RAM in my pocket in a compact package, as with the Everex.
Well, give us a few years and we'll have our cake and eat it too.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Half a meg for the company phone/address database, half a meg for a novel or two, a meg or two for email, half a meg for a couple of databases and spreadsheets, a quarter meg for Datebk3 (Ok, that last one is an application not data).
I think you are missing something, Bruce. Go out and buy that Everex, and use it for a while. Afterwards, tell us which you like more.
PDAs are something you can't judge by hardware alone because it doesn't matter that much. I haven't used up the 2 MB in my upgraded PPro. I can't _ever_ imagine using up 48MB. More important to me are battery life and overall usability.
I haven't used a CE machine myself, but I know people who do. They don't use it nearly as much as I do, because it's too slow, isn't as usable, or sucks up batteries. These are important characteristics for something you're going to carry around with you all the time!
I know one person who has a CE machine with keyboard, and still carries a pen and paper everywhere. He updates the CE with new appts and stuff during downtime at his desk.
(On a different note, I think the main reason 3com is taking it slow upping the memory on these things is working the OS to the point you don't need a defrag program if you have 8MB.)
No flames here. A friend of mine was comparing CE devices with Palm devices, and was wowed by the 8 megs or so on the CE devices... but I explained that a Palm Pro can do a lot more (in my opinion) with 1 meg than a CE thingy can do with 8.
People don't NEED "really small PCs" in their pockets, at least not with the human interfaces available today. (If I could have all the functionality of my desktop in my pocket, that would be cool, but having pentium power with a low-res LCD and a tap-to-type keyboard would be worthless)
That's what the Palm folks got right - it's designed to complement your PC, they don't pretend that it could replace it.
The different operating systems are like night and day with respect to memory use. Windows (CE or not) is a pig for memory. The Pilot's OS isn't.
True, they are aimed at different market segments for different uses...
Anyone should feel free to disagree with me after taking a while to peruse developer documentation for both platforms.
Someone is selling one on EBay... $135 I think. It's a plug in replacement if you're willing to perform open-case surgery your III. :)
If you don't feel comfortable doing it, DON'T. It's a complex procedure involving soldering leads within a sub-milimeter tollerance. All that while not overheating the board so you don't damage the BGA mounted dragonball. Not for the faint-of-heart. If you haven't done close pitch soldering before, don't even think about doing it without at least getting some practice in on a board you don't care about.
;)
There are some guys getting an opperation underway to sell this as a service. I believe they wanted $150 to upgrade a Palm V. Opening the case without damage is tough, and the soldering isn't easy either, even for the experienced. I'd say it's a fair price. They say they will also sell upgraded units. Keep in mind, doing something like this will void your waranty. If you break it, or have someone else break it for you, don't call 3Com.
As for if you need it, I'd say no. I'm not using the 1MB my pro came with.. Of course that didn't stop me from upgrading it to 2MB anyway, but that's not the point.
Travis
Where do you most often access slashdot from?
F /...
( ) Work.
( ) Home.
( ) Rob is lame. Out of Katz's ass.
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
I wonder how much this "upgrade" would have cost if it were included in the original design of the thing in the first place. That was one of the biggest disappointments to me about the new palms (IIIx and V) is that the price of the V was so much higher, but the IIIx was mostly the superior machine.
:(
:) I'm drooling over that lovely display!
Starting to feel like my fave PDA might be a dying breed as other brands gain majorly on the technology because of decisions like this.
Next, I want someone to tell me how I cna swap out the screen on my plain vanilla Palm III for the new IIIx screen.
Ready and willing-- already had to do it once, when it hit the pavement and the screen's ribbon cable came loose. :) Was more inclined to hack around inside than spend $100 for shipping & repair.
Ya don't happen to have a URL on that do ya?
There's a guy who will either sell you a pre-made Palm V-8 for $600 or will upgrade yours for $150. Here are some pictures.
I play Nerd-Folk!
A guy named John Figeroa plans to sell Palm V-8s for $600 or do upgrades for $150. His web site includes a bunch of great pictures. I'm tempted.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Oh come on....like you've never met an electrical engineer who doesn't approximate. I usually approixmate the 60Hz line noise to 0Hz in high frequncy applications.
- Dan
I got the Palm V -- wanted the rechargable batteries and smaller size -- and am quite liking it. I put FlashPRO on it, so I can move all my common apps to ROM. Instant extra 800kb memory. The only way I'm going to run out in the foreseeable future is if I start deciding to put all my eText's on at once, which I don't really need to do. It's working quite nicely.
More memory would be *nice*, but I can make do quite well with what it comes with.
-- Meet the Residents -- http://www.residents.com/
Until I get bandwidth, I'm stuck doing my surfing from work. But that doesn't mean I have to run Windoze at home.
Thought for the day, don't you really dislike the space and bandwidth wasted by most signatures?
at least if my palm had 8 mb of ram at could compete with my HP-48GX =]
"All that glitters is not gold"
when i put the mod chip in my playstation i was appalled at how small the damned pads were compared to the pictures in the instructions (which were obviously like 300x magnification) *grin*
i bought a micro soldering iron (very small wattage) and some very small solder (30 awg?)
with flux core.
alot of patience, daniel-son
"All that glitters is not gold"
No, they are also replacing the memory chip. Compare the pictures -- one has a robot-soldered chip, and one has a hand-soldered one (doesn't look pretty, but I'm amazed the guy was able to do it at all since it's so small).
Yes, it's very nice that the Palm V is actually upgradeable... It makes me feel a little less bad about the fact that I'm still waiting for mine to ship...
But the question that comes to my mind is, how much does that extra memory chip cost? Also, I don't think I'd trust myself to crack open my new Palm V myself, and try to solder things to the board... Am I going to be able to find someone who will do it for me, and how much more will that cost?
Is it worth the extra cost to get the extra memory? Or will I be just fine with 2MB?
(And yes, I think that the Palm V is worth it, for the extra carrying convenience and the rechargeable battery... I'm buying it, aren't I?)
-Snibor Eoj
The three truly "geek" things:
1. Any computer running a free *nix (Linux is the most prominent example) or any other suitably "alternative" OS (Amiga, Be, even OS/2)
2. A Hewlett Packard calculator (old geeks have 41's, newer geeks have 48SX's, and really recent geeks have 48GX's)
3. A PalmOS based organizer. (The most recent addition to the trilogy, before, it was just a pair.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Dude, I have a detailed map of SF in my 2MB Palm III (no x here).
:^|
Grab 'em from http://www.handmap.org/. (I think.)
It's only $6.
Yeah, it'd be nice to run a Linux webserver (or even a little # cruncher to process Navier-Stokes eq.) on one of those strongARM WinCE PDA's.
I already love using my palm as a portable vt100.
--Al
Anyone else notice the "three Zero ohm-chip-resistors" mentioned in the story? I'd have a great time in meetings with this thing. Put some huge magnets in my briefcase and float my Palm on top. Maybe we could get a bunch of these and make a maglev train composed of Palm V's. I wonder if the next model up has a cold fusion power supply....
Mmmhe mHEH. Beef.
--
Beef
"Raging Moderate" of the
Opps I posted it as a sorty of its own when i wanted to reply to this discussion.
h tml
here's a link describing an 8Mb upgrade for the Palm III
http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/Palm8M/index.
The Palm V is not aimed at /.ers. It is almost completely a cosmetic thing, with a higher version number, to sell at an inflated price to the same people who drive the biggest SUVs while talking on the smallest cell-phones. These people don't care if it sucks technically. They probably wouldn't even notice if it had 8mb of RAM. They probably won't ever install an app that doesn't come pre-loaded or on the CD. They just want it to show off on the golf course. That it costs too much is actually a selling point for its target audience. The rest of us who can read and care about specs are being served by the Palm IIIx.
Linux, an Open Source OS, has
been ported to the Palm.
I bump up against the 1 meg line on a regular basis with docs and PIM data alone. Never mind the various > 300K z-code games for Frotz, the PalmMap databases (a few of which could strain a 2 or 4 meg device), the odd image here or there for reference or personalization...
Seriously, I could make extensive use of at least 4 meg, and with some carelessness, 8. People who use their Pilots use them *hard*.
Anyone here feel the pain of looking at their Palm Pro and seeing how OLD it is?
"My Palm Pilot is named Arthur. Maybe that's why it locks up."
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me...
OK,
This thing is cool. 8mb is even more excellent.
Why in heavens name didn't they do this in the first place? Palm OS is pretty decent, but their hardware is not advancing very quickly.
When are they going to produce one that has as much muscle as the ITSY? That seems to be the next really decent hardware platform. They need to lose the dragonball chip and throw in a coldfire, or strongarm chip that has some actual guts behind it.
I like the Palm PDAs and want to see them beat out the whine-doze CE PDAs, if for no other reason than useability and interoperability, but they are not doing themselves a favor sticking with such underpowered hardware.
K
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is not shared." -St. Augustine
There is a nice little device in development called the parachute that will attach to the palm and provide a type II slot. Bob
No, what they are saying is that you resolder a few traces *and* replace the memory chip with a larger capacity one. *Not* an easy thing to do when you have heat sensitive chips right next to it.
Wasn't this already posted about 1.5 months ago??
Oh well..
me too, o well hardly do anything with it anyways. maybe i'll upgrade when they have a soundsystem play mp3 and have a gig of mem.