I'd use a regular soldering iron with a narrow beveled tip and plenty of no-wash tacky flux, despite the crampedness. Make sure you have a copper braid available too.

Since you have a hot air station, using it and tin paste might be an easier option if you have some previous experience with that method. If you aren't spot on with the amount of paste to use, it will probably end up in a mess though.

Also use kapton tape if you are planning to use hot air.

I used aluminium foil to cover things and I managed to get to the row of pins next to the PCMCIA slot with a very fine tip.
Operation successful: a whopping 64MB RAM now!

no onboard size jumpers/spd reprogramming needed? Bios picked it up automagically? neat

naujoks wrote on 2024-06-19, 12:39:

I used aluminium foil to cover things and I managed to get to the row of pins next to the PCMCIA slot with a very fine tip.
Operation successful: a whopping 64MB RAM now!

Woah, nice job.
I was gonna say foil tape is best according to hot air soldering videos I've seen on youtube, aluminium foil should work great too when it doesn't blow away

Is the Sony PCG-505FX another one of Sony's laptops that has totally non-standard memory? Looks like it is: https://www.pchistory.lv/notebook-sony-pcg-505fx/
My Picturebook PCG-C1XD is the same, stuck with the stock 64MB ram forever
That's very cool that it worked with just doubling the density, I guess that's because it's EDO rather than SDRAM

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-06-22, 19:08:

no onboard size jumpers/spd reprogramming needed? Bios picked it up automagically? neat

Yes, that's right.
I only knew this would work because someone else tried to do this before me:
http://www.fieros.de/vaio/ram.html

Unfortunately I don't have the RAM module, so I can't get the machine up to 128MB.

It's an awesome little laptop, which I would have been very happy to use in 1998. Financally it was waaaay out of reach though.
It does all the things it's supposed to do really fast, like Word opens in a second or so. It even plays Half Life (quite choppily though).

Does it have pipelined burst cache? in that case 64MB is the optimal config since it maxes out 430TX cacheable area.

>http://www.fieros.de/vaio/ram.html

Have you also overclocked yours http://www.fieros.de/vaio/cpu.html ? 😀

omg I hadn't even seen that yet!
I will have to try it out immediately. The poor VAIO, it was settling in for its old age but now it's being pushed to its limits 🤣

266MHZ -> 300MHz suggests fsb 66 -> 75 on a Tilamook with 4x multiplier There are Libretto OC guides on the net with clues how to find multiplier pins if your CPUI happens to be unlocked
Re: Soldering RAM chips question

I did the mod, but it didn't change anything. The machine is still at 266MHz. What a shame.

Bios will still show 266 with the mod, have you checked benchmarks?

According to the website, it will say 300MHz on the boot screen.
I checked with HWINFO, it says 266 there too.

hmm if the bios can show 300 then it would suggest its a multiplier mod after all bumping to mythical x4.5
I pasted wrong link in my previous post 😐 back to this thread instead of Re: Tillamook SMP and multiplier unlocking investigation thread.
locked CPU will not let you do that, and as Sphere478 found out even unlocked ones arent a guarantee

So this CPU is probably locked then?

yep, there could still be 75MHz option hidden somewhere on the board