128 / 256 / 512 Mb Ram Upgrades


Steve-O

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Is it not possible to do 128 / 256 / 512 MB Ram Upgrades Using the Chips from a MP3 Player???
 
i thought the chips in an MP3 player were like mini hard drives not like ram chips.


I dont know... I just looked on a Web site and saw a opened up MP3 Player and the memory (where it stores the music) looked exactly the same as a Ram Chip.
 
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i guess it could be ram chips, i was just thinking how a computer works, you can save the stuff in ram, but the type of ram that the GP32 uses I believe is the type of Ram that cannot be saved. If you could set up a ram drive on the GP32 as soon as you turn off the power it would delete everything in the ram drive, the 8mb in the GP32 cannot be written to and saved, so I don't think it would act the same way with the MP3 player, ram is generally used to write to for certain programs only to be deleted once that program is done and used for another program.
 
It's not RAM chips. It's probably some kind of flash. The MP3 players have to store the data on them even when there's no power. This isn't possible with RAM. Sorry.

What would you do with even 128mb RAM on a GP32?
 
lol no gba emu would ever need 128mb ram.

and mp3-players have no ram to store. A ram will be deleted if it has no power and that would be stupid for a mp3 player.
imagine your batteries are empty, you buy new ones but the songs would be deleted. Would be stupid or not ?

and 2. it would use up to much energy if you had to keep the ram powered.

Hope is could help.
Seraptin
 
Not sure what chips you're referring to, although with MP3 players the memory size people talk about is always the Flash, as a consumer MP3 player really doesn't need a lot of RAM.

But anyway, it doesn't matter - the limit here is the CPU. It can address 2 banks of RAM, each a maximum of 32MB in size - so 64MB is as high as it's going to go.

Also I've done 32MB / 64MB upgrades for people and nobody has produced any software that actually uses the extra memory. Why should they? I don't think there will ever be enough people with expanded memory GP32's to make it worthwhile.

As for GBA emulation, I've been involved with some efforts to get that going and the RAM isn't the problem. To get it going fast enough, you need to run the GBA code natively in the GP32's CPU and virtualise the GBA hardware. That's a tough problem! Some very talented people have worked on it (and for all I know, might still be working on it) and they haven't got it right yet. So don't hold your breath :)
 
Chips dont come in like 128mb's. The memory sticks that you put in your computer have around 12-24 different chips on them. I suppose you might be able to get 170 mb chip if you want to mutilate a 2gb stick.
 
wait, ROB, you said you do it for people?
how much would you charge to make a service out of it??
Aww man, and OC and RAM mod could make a lot of pocket cash
that would be so sweet dude

~Octavious
 
And even if you could get the flash memory chips working in a GP32, it would be the same as using an SMC for RAM - it's just too slow, because it isn't meant to be constantly written to. RAM chips are designed to be written to, read from, and erased extremely quickly compared to flash memory, with the only disadvantage being the volatility - that is, the fact that they lose all the stored information each time power is lost.
 
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