I don't know if this has been done before, so forgive me if this is common knowledge. It's kind of proof-of-concept.Just thought I'd let everybody know that it does seem to be possible to upgrade your 16MB C-1000 or Sharp Tripad by yourself, if you've got some spare laptop parts and are good at soldering. This may be important since I was recently looking for a 32MB upgrade for my unit and couldn't find one.
Specifically, having been inspired by the Newton 2000-to-2100 "upgrade" and being about to retire my C-1000/Tripad unit anyway, I decided to see if I could pull some flat-pack EDO dram chips from a laptop SODIMM and solder them onto the blank spaces on the back of the Clio memory card.
So, I desoldered two 8MB chips (50-pin flat pack) from the laptop 32MB EDO SODIMM using a generic pin (like a seamstress uses) and a 15 watt soldering iron. I then soldered these two chips onto the empty spaces on the back of the 16MB memory module in my C-1000/Tripad unit.
It took a couple of re-solderings on some of the joints (I've never been a particularly good solderer), but finally, after a hard reset and removing and re-inserting the battery, the unit roared to life. I calibrated the touch-screen, entered the date, time and owner information, and went straight to the control panel "system" icon, which now says that the unit has 32MB of RAM. I've installed some software and so far, everything appears to work fine.
Notes:
1) No noticeable speed improvement. :(
2) The unit does now have a lot more database room (i.e. for HPC Notes databases!)
3) 32MB EDO SODIMMs are cheap (I got this one for $20.00) so if it continues to work, this may be an inexpensive way for hardware tinkerers to upgrade.
4) I've only had it running and been playing with it now for about an hour, so it may yet have a problem or two. I'll post if there are negative developments.
But to recap for anyone interested: using two of the 8MB chips from a 4-chip 32MB EDO SODIMM (standard laptop memory) and sticking them on the back of the Clio 16MB memory card turns it into a 32MB unit, as expected. Should work on either a C-1000 or a Tripad.
If anyone else has had experience with this or knows of some reason why what I just did is bad (nervous grin) please let me know.
-A. Hsiao
