Has anyone hacked any more RAM unto it yet?

[insidol]

Hello guys i'm new to the forum, i was wondering if anyone has hacked on more ram unto the Pandora yet, it has 256MB built in yes but i was wondering if anyone has hacked like 512 MB or eve 1GB of ram unto it (main reason i want to play doom 3 on it when i order like 3) please let me know guys


Insidol

 

[Nintendo]

Moved to Pandora General Talk.

 

[insidol]

so you can use the SD card as ram right? that's what you're saying?

 

[Link]

Not possible on this board design. Maybe I am wrong here but there was talk of a developers Pandora a few months back then CC dropped the ball on making boards that function properly. They suck, maybe when a new company to produce boards can be found a reliably produce the next revision then something of this nature may come to life later.

 

[insidol]

ok kool.....but i think they should put more ram on it.... i mean i'm ordering it to test out games before i start to develop for the 3DS so i hope they put on like 512MB or even 1GB of ram... i'll buy this version still otherwise....they need a distributor too cause i just heard about this console last week. I was like why haven't i heard of this before!!!


anyhow thanks

 

[TrashyMG]

Doom3 (Id Tech 4 engine) isn't open sourced yet, It will most be open-sourced sometime after the Rage engine is released. So until then there can be no ports to arm type devices.. I'm not sure even with a proper port and more RAM how it would preform on the Pandora let alone any current Arm based devices.

 

[insidol]

well doom 3 can run on 354 ram and a pentium III processor. so i think it might be able to handle ID Tech 4 games(the early ones) probably without specular mapping and shadows. Also when ID Tech 4 goes GPL u can move most of the rendering Arch to the GPU as opposed to the CPU with Doom 3

 

[Exophase]

Not possible on this board design. Maybe I am wrong here but there was talk of a developers Pandora a few months back then CC dropped the ball on making boards that function properly. They suck, maybe when a new company to produce boards can be found a reliably produce the next revision then something of this nature may come to life later.

Expanding the RAM isn't an option for end-users, but it's not CircuitCo's fault.


The only way you can feasibly increase the amount of RAM on a handheld is to replace the RAM or, if they exposed the interface to a RAM chip that wasn't populated on the board populate it, like on the GP32. The RAM on Pandora is on a fine pitch BGA in a package-on-package on top of the SoC. Replacing it would be all but impossible for anyone who doesn't have expensive equipment and expertise in assembling PoP, and furthermore your options would be limited because it has to be the same type of RAM in the same footprint and has to have NAND on package like the Pandora's.

 

[thatgui]

More RAM won't happen due to the fact, that manually exchanging the RAM is not possible for OP Ltd. - The RAM Module is directly seated on the CPU (Pop) so you will need very special (and expensive) tools and a whole lot of experience to exchange the module. Beside the fact, that these Moduls can not just be ordered via a catalouge, and are surely expensive too, in this small quantities.

 

[cinaed666]

^ exactly what I was going to say.


Besides you shouldn't directly compare the pandora's specs to a normal computer.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

well doom 3 can run on 354 ram and a pentium III processor. so i think it might be able to handle ID Tech 4 games(the early ones) probably without specular mapping and shadows. Also when ID Tech 4 goes GPL u can move most of the rendering Arch to the GPU as opposed to the CPU with Doom 3

Don't forget that there's no dedicated VRAM, everything's running off the main RAM.

 

[Link]

Not possible on this board design. Maybe I am wrong here but there was talk of a developers Pandora a few months back then CC dropped the ball on making boards that function properly. They suck, maybe when a new company to produce boards can be found a reliably produce the next revision then something of this nature may come to life later.

Expanding the RAM isn't an option for end-users, but it's not CircuitCo's fault.


The only way you can feasibly increase the amount of RAM on a handheld is to replace the RAM or, if they exposed the interface to a RAM chip that wasn't populated on the board populate it, like on the GP32. The RAM on Pandora is on a fine pitch BGA in a package-on-package on top of the SoC. Replacing it would be all but impossible for anyone who doesn't have expensive equipment and expertise in assembling PoP, and furthermore your options would be limited because it has to be the same type of RAM in the same footprint and has to have NAND on package like the Pandora's.

I never said it was their fault. But this whole fiasco has not brought about any news of the "developers" Pandora Craig discussed a few months back.

 

[WizardStan]

ok kool.....but i think they should put more ram on it....

Why? What are you hoping to accomplish with more RAM? Other than the "more is always good" argument, there is very little that actually needs that much RAM on the Pandora. Firefox is pretty much the only thing that I've found that would truly benefit from more RAM. I even multitasked out the wazoo, running games and PDF viewer and Abiword and MP3 and there was still some RAM to spare.

 

[insidol]

well a precaution for ID Tech 4 homebrews

 

[Exophase]

I never said it was their fault. But this whole fiasco has not brought about any news of the "developers" Pandora Craig discussed a few months back.

I haven't heard about this Developer's Pandora, but I don't imagine it could be something that lets you change the RAM.. unless you mean Craig was talking about a different Pandora spin with a larger capacity RAM chip included?

 

[craigix]

I never said it was their fault. But this whole fiasco has not brought about any news of the "developers" Pandora Craig discussed a few months back.

I haven't heard about this Developer's Pandora, but I don't imagine it could be something that lets you change the RAM.. unless you mean Craig was talking about a different Pandora spin with a larger capacity RAM chip included?

I'm also not entirely sure what he is talking about either.


While 512MB ram exists for this chip it would require software to support it, so even if you somehow replaced the RAM it would not work.

 

[neko]

I'm also not entirely sure what he is talking about either.

 

[mcobit]

Software to support it? Ram should be supported by any software...

 

[Blue Protoman]

He means drivers, the kernel, etc. Sure you could change them, but could you change everything else, assuming that modifying the hardware itself went OK?

 

[thatgui]

ok kool.....but i think they should put more ram on it....

Why? What are you hoping to accomplish with more RAM? Other than the "more is always good" argument, there is very little that actually needs that much RAM on the Pandora. Firefox is pretty much the only thing that I've found that would truly benefit from more RAM. I even multitasked out the wazoo, running games and PDF viewer and Abiword and MP3 and there was still some RAM to spare.

At least ivanovic (maintainer and co-developer of BfW) has said in the german forum that cramping wesnoth into the available RAM of the pandora is no easy task. Also having more RAM would kill the RAM - usage argument against activating the dsp. So i do think in that case more RAM would help.


But for a lot of obvious reasons this simply won't happen. Mabye when meet again for pandora 2 on the search for even more money (i hope this comes out right, i could only remember the german translation)

He means drivers, the kernel, etc. Sure you could change them, but could you change everything else, assuming that modifying the hardware itself went OK?

Mabye a dumb question - but why is that? Maybe the kernel needs a little tweaking (which I doubt, as even a embedded, modern kernel should adapt to it automatically), but why is there a need for tweaking software. RAM management is done by the kernel, not by applications.