That's a guru here, I think (cool dude with the blue sweater).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0

aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-26, 10:58:

remove the GDDR memory chips from a NVIDIA card and replace them with GDDR chips DOUBLE their sizes, effectively DOUBLING the amount of GDDRAM of the GPU and it was working!!!

To do this, you need to have a soldering station with bottom heating and many donors, i.e. make money on repairs. For example, repairs video cards after mining.
The third time you will get exactly the same trick.
Because if you buy all this for a hobby, you will go broke.

Don't confuse development and repair (with such related tricks). Repairs are carried out based on typical faults, because spending more than 3-4 hours on 1 device is not economically efficient.

Yet again, developing a daughterboard using modern CAD is not a problem. For example, ASUS sound cards are copied and pasted from the datasheet for each chip used. Really, you don't need a schematic. You just open the datasheet, and everything is taken exactly from the reference design.
In general, at the initial level, this is not a rocket science. In 2-3 years you can reach the junior specialist level

Thanks for your inputs guys!

All interesting.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-09-28, 03:37:

Yeah CS is all over the place depending where you take it, some is very theoretical and high level and basically the management of computer installations for various purposes, some is closer to microelectronic engineering with a side of programming, while covering all the architecture theoreticals. Even what might be considered broad and technical might not give you much clue about anything used before 2010 other than broad strokes historical overview.

I have to agree. I don't have university education, but I've been tinkering on PCs and experimenting with whatever I could get my hands on (both HW and SW) since I was 12 yo in 1992. You can imagine.
For sure I lack much theoretical background. Or maybe I know how to do something but now how to formally define what I'm doing.
But the kind of backbone that hands-on experience gives you, especially in those command prompt times, with no internet? It's invaluable.

This IT mentor older buddy of mine was a genius, but most of the times he was working.
You were there, with a problem in front of you. You computer acting. Or a program, or even a game. A weird error message. An odd behavior, anything. You're there. Alone. All your friends know nothing about computers, you can't call any. No intrnet. No nothing. No university manuals. No icons to click on. No menus to open. Just you, the problem, and the flashing cursor. You just have to squeeze your brains and go by trials and errors... Until you figure it out...