Reply 25360 of 27685, by DerBaum
- Rank
- Oldbie
AST time again...
I want to give the AST 2 MB of RAM instead of the installed 1MB.
There is a slight problem... I cant print money...
The system uses 1x256kbit chips as RAM. 512kb of RAM use !!18!! of these freakin chips...
And because i need 36 of them, the retro resellers decided they cost 3 (to 12) Euros EACH!!!
So... I had to get creative.
I have a 286 donor board from the scrap where all socketed chips are missing and with battery damage.
And it uses the right RAM chips for my AST... Easy decision.
It took me 5 hours to desolder 18 Chips, clean them, test them and find out that 16 of the 18 chips work perfectly fine!
Just 2 broken ones. NEAT!
Now i need just 20 instead of 36. And because i have time i will see where i can find cheap ones.
Donor:
Cleaned chips:
AST FastRAM card i have to fill (with the 2 broken chips on top):
CheckIT is happy with my rescued RAM:
Finally i made a parts bag with a boot disk, the 2 broken ics, the 16 working ics and the case screws.
FCKGW-RHQQ2