Just picked my self up an Aoyue 908 Rework Station. Been wanting a rework station for awhile now. Excited to get it in and start playing around and swapping out my ram.
haha and here i used my standard 12$ radioshack soldering iron.... Pro tools baby!
Yea pro tools are nice. The router's ram was not a deciding factor for the rework station. It was a bunch of little things bundled that made me decide to get it. That and the fact that I'm picky about doing a quality job from the first time. I guess you could say that my pet peeve is hating to do something twice when it can get done right the first time.
I now know why I have issues with my router. It will freeze up and I can't log into it via GUI. Also I use it in client mode and it will not connect me to the net but I can get into the GUI. The only way around it was always to do 30,30,30 and then load my saved nvram.bak onto it. Turns out it all because i'm running out of ram. Just checked the percent of ram usage and I'm up to 97% for a minute. Way to high in my opinion. I think this is why I'm having all my issues is cause not enough ram power.
Also I wanted to ask you about 16 MB ram vs. 32 MB ram. I have 16MB chips and am wondering if that will be enough for me. What I mean is, do you every hit close to 16MB on your router? If you do, then what is running on the router that gets you up there? Thanks in advance for your help dragon-fly. _________________ WRT54G v5, v6, v8
WRT54G-TM
Yea pro tools are nice. The router's ram was not a deciding factor for the rework station. It was a bunch of little things bundled that made me decide to get it. That and the fact that I'm picky about doing a quality job from the first time. I guess you could say that my pet peeve is hating to do something twice when it can get done right the first time.
I now know why I have issues with my router. It will freeze up and I can't log into it via GUI. Also I use it in client mode and it will not connect me to the net but I can get into the GUI. The only way around it was always to do 30,30,30 and then load my saved nvram.bak onto it. Turns out it all because i'm running out of ram. Just checked the percent of ram usage and I'm up to 97% for a minute. Way to high in my opinion. I think this is why I'm having all my issues is cause not enough ram power.
Also I wanted to ask you about 16 MB ram vs. 32 MB ram. I have 16MB chips and am wondering if that will be enough for me. What I mean is, do you every hit close to 16MB on your router? If you do, then what is running on the router that gets you up there? Thanks in advance for your help dragon-fly.
16 MB should be enough. i havent ever seen my router getting close to 16 mb used.
i havent done anything particularly special to my dd-wrt install on my router. its basically mostly default. i use it to track my internet usage.
16 MB should be enough. i havent ever seen my router getting close to 16 mb used.
i havent done anything particularly special to my dd-wrt install on my router. its basically mostly default. i use it to track my internet usage.
Thanks for your help. I tried the 16MB chip and could not get into the router. Port one was blinking normal as it should when communicating with the computer. The power light was blinking non stop. I was able to get the power light to stop blinking and the wlan light to be on by re-flowing the solder, so I know it was up but couldn't get into the gui.
I think maybe its looking in the wrong spot of the ram and thats why I'm not able to get in. Put the 8MB chip back in, and router works. Did this a couple of times just to make sure I was doing things right.
Sure enough, every time I put the 8 meg back in, the router would boot up and I could get into the gui. I think I need to use a 32MB chip even if I just want to use 16MB of it.
Now I just need to find a 256MB sodimm ram stick with the right specs so that I have enough ram chips for my other routers. _________________ WRT54G v5, v6, v8
WRT54G-TM
Does anyone have proof that a 16 mb chip will operate and run at 16 mb without error? I have a TON of SDRam sticks sitting around but the biggest ones I have only have 16 megabytes per chip. (Not sure how the mathematical annotation goes). I don't have a JTAG cable but going by from what I've read in this topic, you can just put the old 8 mb chip back if it doesn't boot. I've got one more old computer I can gut out to check out the ram in it but I'm willing to bet it's just another small one.
At 8 mb of ram, I have to disable QoS, the web GUI, SPI, and several other features otherwise the router is a slug when users are on the wireless and ethernet ports. It's still better than the stock Linksys firmware though.
Does anyone have proof that a 16 mb chip will operate and run at 16 mb without error? I have a TON of SDRam sticks sitting around but the biggest ones I have only have 16 megabytes per chip. (Not sure how the mathematical annotation goes). I don't have a JTAG cable but going by from what I've read in this topic, you can just put the old 8 mb chip back if it doesn't boot. I've got one more old computer I can gut out to check out the ram in it but I'm willing to bet it's just another small one.
At 8 mb of ram, I have to disable QoS, the web GUI, SPI, and several other features otherwise the router is a slug when users are on the wireless and ethernet ports. It's still better than the stock Linksys firmware though.
as long as you check to see that the pinout is the same, it should work. the only risk of frying your router is if you short the pins during the soldering, or if you rip off some pads during the removal of the 8 mb chip.
Basically just be careful about how you do it and always have a 2nd router backup in case something DOES go wrong.
I've got spares (ZyXEL 802.11g, old Netgear 802.11b, D-link DI-604, etc.). My main concern is that I've never delt with soldering chips (or ICs) before. I've mainly only soldered wires and capacitors (not surface mount ones either). I tried to de-solder a mosfet from a broken motherboard and let's just say it didn't go well (I heard they're generally tedious to remove as it is). Hopefully removing the ram is a bit easier than that? The fun part's gonna be putting the new one in place..
you'll have to ask that seller if its a 8 chip or 16 chip ram stick and then find the datasheet for the ram chips on it to see if its compatible or not.
I've got spares (ZyXEL 802.11g, old Netgear 802.11b, D-link DI-604, etc.). My main concern is that I've never delt with soldering chips (or ICs) before. I've mainly only soldered wires and capacitors (not surface mount ones either). I tried to de-solder a mosfet from a broken motherboard and let's just say it didn't go well (I heard they're generally tedious to remove as it is). Hopefully removing the ram is a bit easier than that? The fun part's gonna be putting the new one in place..
Compatible? I also have some older Samsung 16 ram but it only runs at PC100. Would the speed difference matter?
putting the ram back on is the easy part. pulling it off is the hard part. trust me on this one.
Many ways to do it, one is with a heat gun, but that might fry the capacitors neat the ram module or blow some small smds away
the other way is to use TONS of flux and lots of solder, fill up both sides and just pray you are quick enough at melting the solder on both sides and ripping off the chip like that.
as for the chip you want to use, i don't think it will work, being the x8. if it were the x16 it would have worked.
Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 13049 Location: Behind The Reset Button
Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 14:10 Post subject:
dragon-fly wrote:
putting the ram back on is the easy part. pulling it off is the hard part. trust me on this one.
Many ways to do it, one is with a heat gun, but that might fry the capacitors neat the ram module or blow some small smds away
the other way is to use TONS of flux and lots of solder, fill up both sides and just pray you are quick enough at melting the solder on both sides and ripping off the chip like that.
as for the chip you want to use, i don't think it will work, being the x8. if it were the x16 it would have worked.
This stuff works great for removing smt chips. Also very helpful clearing out factory filled header holes:
If anyone finds one, could they point me in the right direction for buying one? These data charts are too technical for me to understand, but i'd like to do this mod.....
If anyone has any spare? I can pay for shipping?
[EDIT] - Ok so i ordered the Kingston KVR model KVR133X64C3/128 memory stick off of ebay....hope this works. _________________ ASUS RT-AC68U [Kong build 24850] = main router
Linksys E2000 [Build 15962M NEWD-2 K2.6 big] = client bridge
hope you enjoy your new router!