original xbox ram upgrade 128mb XBox 128mb Ram Upgrade Issue

[MrBriteSide 2]

Hi guys,

I have an odd issue with my ram upgrade. At the moment I have 3 of the 4 chips soldered to the board and it boots "properly". When I initially had the 4th chip installed, the system would still boot but it would not give me the full 128mb only 64. I figured it was re-flow. So far I have gone through many rounds of remove, reflow and wick and such and it has brought me to the current point I am at now with 3/4 chips installed. I thought I could use Xblast (through .xbe launcher) to try and see if the chips are at least working but whenever I try the RAM test it always freezes up the system. I was using the newest version of Xblast OS. I was wondering if anyone had any solutions on this situation? Ive spent way too many hours trying to figure this out so far. All RAM chips are of same model number as well.

 Thanks

[neighbor 36]

just check all the connections, and remove any bridges between them. Of course make sure to solder correctly, there is a dot on the board indicating how the RAM chip should stay.

Edited August 29, 2018 by neighbor

[fox 8]

>it would not give me the full 128mb only 64

Xblast is not displaying ANY additional ram after repeated reflows?

[Marc Côté 0]

What are the advantages of the extra ram?  Does it boost features of the games?

 

Thanks,

M

[MrBriteSide 2]

So I finally got the 4th chip on and when I did XBlast still didn't work. After a couple reflow attempts I managed to get it to test the first 2 chips then lockup on the 3rd with vertical black bars on the screen making me think the chips just aren't making full contact or dead. Unfortunately in my attempts to reflow, I think I had my iron way too hot and removed a pad on one of the chips completely making this project now bust. At least I was able to remove all added on chips and have a working motherboard still. In the future for general knowledge, what causes a FRAG vs not being detected? FRAG I took as bridged address pins and not detected as pins not making contact.

Thanks.

[neighbor 36]

4 hours ago, Marc Côté said:

What are the advantages of the extra ram?  Does it boost features of the games?

Did not try everything FloydTheBarber said on TheIsoZone, but here is what he said.

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As for emulation, it helps with different emulators, such as Final Burn Legends. This is the current list of games that work in the current version of FBL that do not on a stock Xbox.

-All Capcom System 3 games
-Dragon Ball-Z
-Dragon Ball-2 2 Super Battle
-Mystic Warriors
-Violent Storm
-Metamorphic Force
-Jackie chan in Fists Of Fire
-Jackie Chan The King Fu Master
-Lord Of Gun
-Alien Challenge
-Lode-Runner The Dig Fight
-Blood Warrior runs on a stock Xbox, but runs better on an Xbox with 128mb of ram

Another emulator that takes advantage of the ram upgrade is Surreal64CE, this is what the creator of that emulator says about using the emulator with an Xbox that has 128mb of ram 

"128MB Xbox owners can enjoy 1964x11 w/o ROM paging. You can play GoldenEye 007 and Conker's BFD with 1964x11." 

he also says

"As per optimal memory configs for an XBox with upgraded RAM, You will be able to decrease Paging Memory to 0 as the whole ROM is cached in memory. You may also make use of higher Anti-Aliasing settings to consume your extra RAM. Further, you may allocate more memory for the Dynamic Recompiler in 1964 and PJ64 via the 'Surreal Menu' (X - in Launcher)"

Setting paging memory to 0 is essentially making the Xbox use only physical ram instead of depending on virtual ram, which improves the chance for reliable emulation.

Of course there is the ability to play 3 Sega Chihiro games as well. Those games are, Virtual Cop 3, Ghost Squad, and Outrun 2 Beta. Out of these three games the most attractive one to have for most people is Virtual Cop 3. Why? because the game has never been ported to any other system, and the only way to have the game is to either own the original game and Chihiro hardware (your looking at about $2000-$3000) or to have an Xbox with 128mb of ram. The other two games are a lot of fun as well, but they have been ported to other systems. Some people prefer to play the original version of the game though, so an Xbox with 128mb gives them this option for a lot less money then buying the original hardware. It could be argued too that the original versions of the game are the best looking graphically, one reason for this argument is that ported versions of the games are shrunk down in order to play on the inferior hardware to the original hardware.

 

 

and another message from Please login or register to see this link. :

Definitely worth it, especially for XBMC users. You can be confident running many more plugins without crashes. Many more skins will be stable, and you can usually show background video & visualizations as well as other fancy skin features. 720p can be used with a lot of flare - fanart, metadata, media flags, libraries, and on.

Increase stream buffer sizes (I cache 16MB to RAM, rather than to the HDD like my stock setups [advancedsettings.xml.]) Full codec support as Floyd mentioned. These two improvements alone justify it for me, being that my overall experience is smoother playback without a need to heavily use HDD.

UnleashX can suck up most of the RAM, too. For people that primarily emulate, EmuXtras Menu (should be later replaced/retitled to Xbox Video Game Museum) works without any snags.

Likely, emulator projects will continue another 10 years; we can be rest assured that more ROMs will turn out 128-only compatibile.

There are still plenty of reasons others mentioned already. But, I noticed nobody else said anything about Linux. For me, it is the most contrasting difference between a stock and upgraded board. "GTK2 Firefox" as found in XDSL, for example, plays YouTube without crashes. I won't detail about it here but the overall potential uses and stability running Linux is striking. 

I own a couple X3CPs, so it isn't for nothing that I have a constant readout of freemem. It further validates my buying an N64 freak box. The value of feeling better than others - priceless.

 

 

Also, there are Xbox games that can be patched for 720p video output, some of them perform better on Xbox with 128mb RAM and CPU upgrade, but this niche is still to be digged.

[KaosEngineer 230]

19 hours ago, MrBriteSide said:

...Unfortunately in my attempts to reflow, I think I had my iron way too hot and removed a pad on one of the chips completely making this project now bust. ...

2

Bust or not

Not all the pads for the chip have a connection anywhere else but to the pad.  Those pads are easy to lift off the board but do not matter as they have no electrical connection only present for physical attachment of the chip to the printed circuit board.  Those pins are labeled N.C (no connection) in the datasheet - see page 4 of the attachment for the pinout diagram.

Samsung K4D263238D-QC50 - DSA-569279.pdf

Edited August 31, 2018 by KaosEngineer

[MrBriteSide 2]

On 8/31/2018 at 5:10 AM, KaosEngineer said:

Bust or not

Not all the pads for the chip have a connection anywhere else but to the pad.  Those pads are easy to lift off the board but do not matter as they have no electrical connection only present for physical attachment of the chip to the printed circuit board.  Those pins are labeled N.C (no connection) in the datasheet - see page 4 of the attachment for the pinout diagram.

Samsung K4D263238D-QC50 - DSA-569279.pdf

I'll have to check the motherboard next time I go home as I am away for school. If I remember right, it was the longer side that had one of the pads lifted as to which it doesn't look too good in terms of resurrection of this attempt. I think next time I attempt something like this I will buy chips off of Ebay or lookup some good suppliers for such chips. Sucks Digikey/Mouser don't sell such chips or equivalent. Thanks for the datasheet though.