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Best way to max out the RAM on a 16-64K 5150 with a single card?

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First post, by keenmaster486

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Yes, I know of projects such as the Lo-Tech 1MB RAM board. But what about solutions involving old cards?

I have an AST SixPakPlus, which has 384K currently installed. The documentation says it can go up to 576K, though... how? It's completely populated.

Here's what I currently have:

Onboard RAM: 64K
AST SixPakPlus: 384K
AST RamPage: 256K
Total: 704K

However, I'd like to try to get more RAM with a single card. The SixPakPlus is nice because it has I/O ports on it, saving a slot for other things.

With the 5 slots in the 5150, I'd like to end up with:

1. Graphics
2. RAM
3. FDD/HDD controller
4. Network card
5. Adlib or Sound Blaster 1.0/2.0

And the I/O integrated into either the RAM card or the FDD/HDD controller.

Interested to hear what solutions others have come up with.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 1 of 5, by Jo22

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Technically, ISA bus or PC bus cards can be stacked, I believe, since ISA slots are wired in parallel..
- Except that special purpose slot #8 (?) on the 5150. It was intended for a fast serial port or something.

On ISA cards, there are sometimes solder joints in parallel to the edge connectors.
By installing a pin header, it would be possible to "sandwich" two of them together.
Speaking under correction, however.

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Reply 3 of 5, by waterbeesje

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For the stacking, you may like to read about the Ibm 5151 unit, it acts exactly that way 😀

As for the ram expansion, I have a ram card that takes 4 banks of ram, either 64kbit or 256kbit chips, and a dip that sets the starting offset. That maxes out any 51x0 8088 and clones. I still want to use it one day to max out my own Multitech MPF+PC clone thing once, as soon as I get it to work properly.

Stuck at 10MHz...

Reply 4 of 5, by Jo22

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keenmaster486 wrote on 2023-05-25, 04:16:

Well, I think I want to stay away from modifying my old cards.

Oh, okay. I do that all the time. 🤷‍♂️

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"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 5 of 5, by maxtherabbit

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keenmaster486 wrote on 2023-05-24, 15:57:
Yes, I know of projects such as the Lo-Tech 1MB RAM board. But what about solutions involving old cards? […]
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Yes, I know of projects such as the Lo-Tech 1MB RAM board. But what about solutions involving old cards?

I have an AST SixPakPlus, which has 384K currently installed. The documentation says it can go up to 576K, though... how? It's completely populated.

Here's what I currently have:

Onboard RAM: 64K
AST SixPakPlus: 384K
AST RamPage: 256K
Total: 704K

However, I'd like to try to get more RAM with a single card. The SixPakPlus is nice because it has I/O ports on it, saving a slot for other things.

With the 5 slots in the 5150, I'd like to end up with:

1. Graphics
2. RAM
3. FDD/HDD controller
4. Network card
5. Adlib or Sound Blaster 1.0/2.0

And the I/O integrated into either the RAM card or the FDD/HDD controller.

Interested to hear what solutions others have come up with.

What about ditching the six pack and just adding more memory to the rampage? Doesn't it support up to 1MB?

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