2012 Nexus 7 eMMC and DRAM Upgrade - Nexus 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
I'm a new member here and as you may be able to tell from the post's topic, I am contemplating an eMMC and DRAM chip swap on my 2012 Nexus 7 but before I start popping chips off from the motherboard, I would like to know if some developers here might know whether the existing (pre-)bootloader stages auto-detect DRAM row count to configure the Tegra3's memory controller. If not, I would need to find the source code for whichever stage handles the memory controller setup and find a way to update it, which brings my other question: is the source code for the MBR, uboot and fastboot stages available somewhere? Also, does a Nexus 7 hardware hacker here happen to know a convenient way to do a full raw eMMC dump, partition edit and re-image? At the moment, the only method I have found is to remove the eMMC chip and either wire it to an SD/MMC USB adapter or buy a $100-300 bed-of-nails eMMC programmer/tester. I obviously would much prefer an in-system method over having to pop the eMMC off each time I mess it up. Alternately, since SD and MMC controllers often support both standards, can the Tegra3 boot from SD connected in place of the eMMC?
I already own most necessary tools and supplies for doing BGA rework with a few more on their way. The biggest challenge there might be finding a suitable 32-64GiB eMMC chip to upgrade to since all the official distributors for major brands only sell in trays of 1000. For the DRAM, I plan to lift the chips from a $40 8GB DDR3L DIMM (16x 512Mx8 1600-11-11-11-23 chips) instead of buying individual ones at $8 each. Yes, I have a DRAM re-balling jig and related supplies.
Why bother with that extreme upgrade idea? Mainly because when I look at most tablets available today, I am severely disappointed to see there is still hardly anything significantly better than the 2012 N7 on the market under $250 CAN nearly four years later. If I could relatively easily bump it up to 2GiB RAM, that would make it a whole lot more usable and refreshing the eMMC with something that has a newer, faster controller will hopefully get rid of the high kernel CPU time spikes I see whenever mmcqd is active. With those two successful upgrades, I could imagine myself using my 2012 N7 for another 2-3 years.
I would have posted this in a more developer-oriented section but as a new member, that isn't an option.
Any thoughts, comments, questions or suggestions?
Thanks.

TeardownDan said:
Hi,
I'm a new member here and as you may be able to tell from the post's topic, I am contemplating an eMMC and DRAM chip swap on my 2012 Nexus 7 but before I start popping chips off from the motherboard, I would like to know if some developers here might know whether the existing (pre-)bootloader stages auto-detect DRAM row count to configure the Tegra3's memory controller. If not, I would need to find the source code for whichever stage handles the memory controller setup and find a way to update it, which brings my other question: is the source code for the MBR, uboot and fastboot stages available somewhere? Also, does a Nexus 7 hardware hacker here happen to know a convenient way to do a full raw eMMC dump, partition edit and re-image? At the moment, the only method I have found is to remove the eMMC chip and either wire it to an SD/MMC USB adapter or buy a $100-300 bed-of-nails eMMC programmer/tester. I obviously would much prefer an in-system method over having to pop the eMMC off each time I mess it up. Alternately, since SD and MMC controllers often support both standards, can the Tegra3 boot from SD connected in place of the eMMC?
I already own most necessary tools and supplies for doing BGA rework with a few more on their way. The biggest challenge there might be finding a suitable 32-64GiB eMMC chip to upgrade to since all the official distributors for major brands only sell in trays of 1000. For the DRAM, I plan to lift the chips from a $40 8GB DDR3L DIMM (16x 512Mx8 1600-11-11-11-23 chips) instead of buying individual ones at $8 each. Yes, I have a DRAM re-balling jig and related supplies.
Why bother with that extreme upgrade idea? Mainly because when I look at most tablets available today, I am severely disappointed to see there is still hardly anything significantly better than the 2012 N7 on the market under $250 CAN nearly four years later. If I could relatively easily bump it up to 2GiB RAM, that would make it a whole lot more usable and refreshing the eMMC with something that has a newer, faster controller will hopefully get rid of the high kernel CPU time spikes I see whenever mmcqd is active. With those two successful upgrades, I could imagine myself using my 2012 N7 for another 2-3 years.
I would have posted this in a more developer-oriented section but as a new member, that isn't an option.
Any thoughts, comments, questions or suggestions?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sory that I can't be much help but keep us updated with what you achieve! I don't know but fitting an N7 2013 logic board and hooking it up with the N7 2012 would be cheaper.

KawaiiAurora said:
I'm sory that I can't be much help but keep us updated with what you achieve! I don't know but fitting an N7 2013 logic board and hooking it up with the N7 2012 would be cheaper.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The guts' layout is completely different with a different LCD and digitizer panel, so that would be impossible - or at least highly impractical. It would be much simpler to get and refurbish a 2013 N7.
I bought three 2013 Nexus 7 over the three months from launch and returned all three of them: the first one had chronic touch issues with a dozen crashes over the 10 days I owned it, the second one crashed a few times over the week I owned it, had backlight flicker and GPS didn't work (took minutes to lock) while the third one had chronic freeze/restart issues. Three bad devices out of three made me give up on owning the 2013 model. Back then, Google's Nexus forum was flooded with people having many of the same issues I had with some claiming they had to have their devices exchanged six or more times before getting one that seemed free of any obvious defects. And then you have the surge of premature eMMC failures that began in early 2015.
The 2013 was a great tablet when it worked correctly. Except my short-lived and highly unpleasant experiences with it completely ruined my confidence in the model, with more recent developments doing very little to improve it.

May have found one of my answers.
Just found this thread about nvflash and generating device-specific blobs to make devices "unbrickable":
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2455927
This appears to bypass the need for a bootloader but would the blobs remain valid even after an eMMC chip swap? Put another way: are the values used to generate the blobs related to anything on the eMMC, such as model, serial number, customer serial number, etc.?

I did some more preliminary reading and got the Tegra3 Reference Manual, read the memory controller section which said that A15 can be used as either an extra DRAM chip (rank) select or row address.
For my memory upgrade plan to work, I need A15 to be routed to the DRAM chips even if the original 2Gib chips do not use it. At first, I thought the DDR3 memory setup registers would guarantee that A15 would be there for configuration purpose but upon reading the spec for the original chip, it turned out that DDR3 only uses A0-14 for configuration purposes.
Does anybody happen to know if A15 is actually routed from the Tegra3 to DRAM chips on the motherboard? I'd like to avoid pulling a chip from the motherboard only to find out that it is either NC or GND.
Edit: Alternately, are there 32ki rows x 2kiB pages 4Gibits DRAMs out there? I checked a few manufacturers but all their 512Mi x 8 chips use 64ki rows x 1kiB pages DRAM bank structure.

Someone managed to upgrade his Nexus 5 from 16gb to 64gb — and not only that, upgraded the eMMC type from 4.5 to 5.0 so it writes and reads much faster.

Related

Ram Upgrade

I know that this is not android development, but it is hardware development, so mods please move if I am not in the right fourm.
I have a friend who works on computers and tablets for a living, so he has not trouble taking tablet apart. He has come across a broken tablet, can't even tell the model anymore that has two 1gb modules of ram in it. These modules are made by the same manufacture as the ones in the tf700, and are the same speed, voltage, and timings. Would it be possible to replace the two 512mb modules that came in our tf700s with these 1gb modules?
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using XDA Premium HD app
It can work if u are lucky. If not you have to change kernel code to adept ddr timing parameters and initialization of the ddr memory
Gesendet von meinem SM-N9005 mit Tapatalk
Memory upgrades.
Aside from the software side of a memory upgrade, you need to know if the devices are pin-compatible with each other.
Vcc, Vdd, Gnd, data, clocks and so on.
Just dropping parts onto a board will not be acceptable, they must be compatible with that device, and the components they are replacing.
Can the support logic work with the increased memory in a manner that will not slow it down, or strangle the overall speed of the memory signal/data paths.
Does the main CPU have the ability to pipeline the increase? What is the cache size it needs to work with?
You could 'piggyback' old RAM chips easily, but in today's world, that is no longer an option.
If the device is cheap enough,you may have more than a clog in the pipes by adding larger amounts of memory, you may already be at that device's limits for handling the memory it already has.
If all things being equal (Occam's razor), then you may get away with removing the old RAM and soldering the larger capacity chips in their place.
I hope you have a proper rework station for pick and place components that probably utilize a ball grid design, you will need to accurately place those devices, or the device will fail. Solder shorts will ruin the device, and may also destroy the support logic, drawing excessive current with heat failures.
I don't mean to take over the LP's thread in any way, but I have been wondering something similar. I only have a poor 512mb in my a13 All winner Zeepad 7.0, and trust me it is noticeable. How would I be able to know if it would run okay based upon the information you just gave? Would that be trial and error? I don't want to waste the money on new ram sticks and then find out that, even after changing the kernel code, my tablet will not like them.

CPU and ROM

Hi,
I've been reading these messages. Excellent discusssion about this device.
A few questions still remain:
1. Is it really so, that Nvidia sold me 8 core device, but I only got 4 cores because even stock FW does not use but only A57 cores? All four A53 cores stand there for nothing?
2. I have a pro version. FW seems to sit firmly on HDD. I also have 16GB of EMMC but it's just for nothing too. Right?
3. Is it really so, that stage 1 boot is locked behind a secure key so that it's not possible to even advanced user to put FW on EMMC so that HDD remains totally for apps and user files?
4. I suppose that even with limitations listed above it might be possible to make this:
- load bootloader from HDD and make it to load kernel + rootfs from microSD.
If this was possible, it would be easy to change OS by just booting with different SD card. Is there such a bootloader already available? If not, should we expect to have it from Nvidia?
I had not heard that the Shield TV is supposed to have 8 cores.Where did you get that info?
Can't answer 2 + 3 because I don't have a Pro.
There is no method (yet) for multi-booting the Shield TV. If one does get made, it'll probably be in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/shield-tv/general/recovery-twrp-2-8-6-0-shield-tv-variants-t3140926
Mogster2K said:
I had not heard that the Shield TV is supposed to have 8 cores.Where did you get that info?
Can't answer 2 + 3 because I don't have a Pro.
There is no method (yet) for multi-booting the Shield TV. If one does get made, it'll probably be in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/shield-tv/general/recovery-twrp-2-8-6-0-shield-tv-variants-t3140926
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
About core count I suppose the device has four A57 cores and other four A53 cores but it only uses A57's becase there still are some limtations in kernel.
About multibooting, while you have 16GB version can you make me DD dump from ROM in your device and I'll try it? My device has completely empty ROM because OS is on HDD. I suppose multibooting might be possible or at least I would like to try. I only need 16GB ROM copy.
You can download the ROMs directly from Nvidia at https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworksdownload. (requires registration)
Mogster2K said:
You can download the ROMs directly from Nvidia at https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworksdownload. (requires registration)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I can not. They are partitions. I need whole EMMC copy.
Flashing partition image needs correct partitions to be already on the device. Mine is completely empty EMMC. Flashing a raw DD copy of the whole 16GB ROM makes partitions exactly as they should be. That's what I need to test my idea.
Tilator said:
Hi,
I've been reading these messages. Excellent discusssion about this device.
A few questions still remain:
1. Is it really so, that Nvidia sold me 8 core device, but I only got 4 cores because even stock FW does not use but only A57 cores? All four A53 cores stand there for nothing?
2. I have a pro version. FW seems to sit firmly on HDD. I also have 16GB of EMMC but it's just for nothing too. Right?
3. Is it really so, that stage 1 boot is locked behind a secure key so that it's not possible to even advanced user to put FW on EMMC so that HDD remains totally for apps and user files?
4. I suppose that even with limitations listed above it might be possible to make this:
- load bootloader from HDD and make it to load kernel + rootfs from microSD.
If this was possible, it would be easy to change OS by just booting with different SD card. Is there such a bootloader already available? If not, should we expect to have it from Nvidia?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here are the answers for you:
1. Is it really so, that Nvidia sold me 8 core device, but I only got 4 cores because even stock FW does not use but only A57 cores? All four A53 cores stand there for nothing?
in short you do have an 8 core processor and all cores are used, just not at the same time.
This is a standard big.LITTLE architecture arm processor. (More info can be found on this at the ARM website)
though it technically is an 8 core processor you should think of it more like (2) 4 core processors.
when more power is needed Android will use the more powerful set of 4 cores.
When less power is needed it will use the lower powered set of cores.
This is basically a way to ensure that you have the maximum amount of processing power when needed but can save battery power when doing small things.
some recent processors set in this configuration do have the ability to kick in all 8 cores when excessive processing power is needed but this is still pretty new and I've heard it can be buggy and not all processors support it.
All this being said since the shield is plugged in all the time it would actually only benefit from just using the more powerful 4 cores exclusively because the power saving cores are weaker but there likely wouldn't be much noticeable difference either way.
2. I have a pro version. FW seems to sit firmly on HDD. I also have 16GB of EMMC but it's just for nothing too. Right?
The pro version has 8GB of EMMC
This is used as a buffer between the hard drive and the ram.
The hard drive in this device is a slower mechanical drive so if everything is stored directly on it then you would see some definite performance differences compared to the 16GB which works completely from EMMC
to get around this they put the 8GB EMMC chip in the middle, it tries to be smart and loads things to the EMMC before you need them so that when the system calls the data to the ram it generally will pull it from the EMMC which is much faster.
That being said some users report some hiccups that they dont see on the 16GB model and my theory is that occasionally when you run something it diddnt load from the EMMC it likely reads it straight from the hard disk which is much slower causing a brief stutter.
3. Is it really so, that stage 1 boot is locked behind a secure key so that it's not possible to even advanced user to put FW on EMMC so that HDD remains totally for apps and user files?
Unfortunately I am unsure weather the boot area is on the hard disk or the EMMC, it would make the most sense to put it on the EMMC but I cant confirm either way unfortunately.
though if you do find that it is on the EMMC it would be much faster to leave it there vs moving it to an SD card.
4. I suppose that even with limitations listed above it might be possible to make this:
- load bootloader from HDD and make it to load kernel + rootfs from microSD.
unfortunately I'm not sure if this one is possible
Tilator said:
About multibooting, while you have 16GB version can you make me DD dump from ROM in your device and I'll try it? My device has completely empty ROM because OS is on HDD. I suppose multibooting might be possible or at least I would like to try. I only need 16GB ROM copy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could try, but it's likely to be a gigabyte or so. I only have a 1 Mb/s upload so it could take days.
Mogster2K said:
I could try, but it's likely to be a gigabyte or so. I only have a 1 Mb/s upload so it could take days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it's better consume some time than not doing this at all.
Do you have means to do it? Booting it in Ubuntu seems to allow fulla access to the EMMC but you need some device to put the copy too.
firefly6240 said:
Here are the answers for you:
1. Is it really so, that Nvidia sold me 8 core device, but I only got 4 cores because even stock FW does not use but only A57 cores? All four A53 cores stand there for nothing?
in short you do have an 8 core processor and all cores are used, just not at the same time.
This is a standard big.LITTLE architecture arm processor.
though it technically is an 8 core processor you should think of it more like (2) 4 core processors.
when more power is needed Android will use the more powerful set of 4 cores.
When less power is needed it will use the lower powered set of cores.
This is basically a way to ensure that you have the maximum amount of processing power when needed but can save battery power when doing small things.
some recent processors set in this configuration do have the ability to kick in all 8 cores when excessive processing power is needed but this is still pretty new and I've heard it can be buggy and not all processors support it.
All this being said since the shield is plugged in all the time it would actually only benefit from just using the more powerful 4 cores exclusively because the power saving cores are weaker but there likely wouldn't be much noticeable difference either way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Overall NVIDIA is using a quad-A57 + quad-A53 design, similar to other high-end SoCs. The A57s have been clocked at 2.0GHz, on part with some of the other A57 designs we’ve seen, meanwhile we’ve been unable to get confirmation on the clockspeed of the A53 cores. Meanwhile rather than a somewhat standard big.LITTLE configuration as one might expect, NVIDIA continues to use their own unique system. This includes a custom interconnect rather than ARM’s CCI-400, and cluster migration rather than global task scheduling which exposes all eight cores to userspace applications. It’s important to note that NVIDIA’s solution is cache coherent, so this system won't suffer from the power/performance penalties that one might expect given experience with previous SoCs that use cluster migration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source:
anandtech.com/show/9289/the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review/2
Despite the fact actually there are obviously only 4 cores active, the "unique" system could be only nvidia's green marketing bull**** again, à la soooo aaaamaaazing.
This company's degraded tremendously for the last years.
I can use the dd command in TWRP Recovery's terminal and copy it to the microSD card, so it will probably work. Have you figured out how to change the boot order?
---------- Post added at 01:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:08 PM ----------
Also, I'm not sure what the big deal is with only having 4 cores active. It's the same as the Snapdragon 810 or any other 8-core mobile CPU - the low and high-power CPUs are paired, and only 1 can run at a time.
Mogster2K said:
I can use the dd command in TWRP Recovery's terminal and copy it to the microSD card, so it will probably work. Have you figured out how to change the boot order?
Not yet. I'll explore it if I can first make EMMC work.
Also, I'm not sure what the big deal is with only having 4 cores active. It's the same as the Snapdragon 810 or any other 8-core mobile CPU - the low and high-power CPUs are paired, and only 1 can run at a time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it's not big deal at all, because there is plenty of power anyways. It's just not correct to sell a product with specs that are not what buyer migh expect it to be. You might have noticed, that Nvidia has taken core count off the selling material too. Maybe they have "second thoughts about it too". But - it's fine anyways.
B.T.W unfortunately there might be an other not so good thing. The Ubuntu they offer might be 32-bit version. Not 64-bit as processor arcitecture allows. Someone told there might be something still wrong with 64-bit graphics drivers.
Mogster2K said:
Also, I'm not sure what the big deal is with only having 4 cores active. It's the same as the Snapdragon 810 or any other 8-core mobile CPU - the low and high-power CPUs are paired, and only 1 can run at a time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Precisely not because nvidia claimed to use a custom design which enables to work with all 8 COREs simultaneously, all 8 COREs should be visible/accessible to programms.
That it is now not the case means nvidia lied or something went wrong and they disabled the weak cores or it would bust the tdp limit and a bigger cooler were necessary.
The big lack of CPU power in comparision to the "mighty" GPU is a big problem but on the other hand not because this devices lacks of appropriate software for more than one year already and that's the reason why its sellings are a lead balloon.
nVidia Shield TV said:
Source:
anandtech.com/show/9289/the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review/2
Despite the fact actually there are obviously only 4 cores active, the "unique" system could be only nvidia's green marketing bull**** again, à la soooo aaaamaaazing.
This company's degraded tremendously for the last years.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WTF. The proof is in the pudding. The X1 is the fastest ARM processor out right now, faster than the Snapdragon 820, Samsung Exynos, Apple A6, etc.
SO yeah, it is amazing.
nVidia Shield TV said:
Source:
anandtech.com/show/9289/the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review/2
Despite the fact actually there are obviously only 4 cores active, the "unique" system could be only nvidia's green marketing bull**** again, à la soooo aaaamaaazing.
This company's degraded tremendously for the last years.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its hard to say without confirmation from Nvidia themselves but I think there may have been a small error in that particular article.
every other article I've seen shows big.LITTLE:
techreport
Greenbot
System on a chip specout
Notebookcheck
The older K1 (Denver) processor (Used in the shield tablet) was an Nvidia custom job based on ARM, its likely that they assumed the X1 was the same.
but with the X1 chip Nvidia went completely with ARM spec with the processors set up in big.LITTLE configuration.
that being said even big.LITTLE chips can be run in tandem to utilise all 8 cores, it just depends on the processor, some are designed to handle it and some arent, and some actually can do it but dont have the software to make it happen (Its a pretty new process).
I'm trying to confirm with nvidia and I'll post the results.
this is completely my speculation but I'm thinking the chip may not be set to process in tandem so locking it to the more powerful cores makes some sense for the shield TV as enabling the lower power cores on a device with no power constraints would give unneeded power improvements and no performance improvements (in fact the opposite is possible, imagine putting your game on pause for long enough that it drops to the lower power cores and then starting it up again, if the game didnt have a wake-lock built in keeping it on the higher cores there would likely be a bit of a hiccup while it swapped back to the main cores).
in a tablet format enabling the lower power cores makes sense to save battery so I suspect in a tablet form it would be enabled (someone with a Pixel C would have to confirm)
Gasaraki- said:
WTF. The proof is in the pudding. The X1 is the fastest ARM processor out right now, faster than the Snapdragon 820, Samsung Exynos, Apple A6, etc.
SO yeah, it is amazing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not in terms of CPU power, in this apple's ones are king.
Apple's CPU + Tegra X1 in one device :highfive:
A couple notes for the OP.
1. Yes, the pro does have the 16 GB emmc, but it is blank, like literally all zeroes. I haven't tried yet, but I presume if it was partitioned out correctly, it would work as you want. One thing to keep in mind: the different models are hardcoded to load fastboot and consequently the boot partition from their respective places. Specifically, the emmc model from the 16 GB emmc and the pro from the 8gb ssd of the hybrid drive. So, you would have to tweak the init files to mount the emmc partitions for the _hdd edition and reflash the boot image. Now also keep in mind, like mentioned before, you wouldn't be gaining space on the HDD by doing this. The 8gb ssd part of the HDD is what the /system, /cache, etc are on, while /data is on the spinny disk.
2. Multirom is coming. I've got the hard part working finally. Just need to do some tedious work to finish it up. Unfortunately, that might take a while, I'm crazy busy the next couple weeks.
Steel01 said:
A couple notes for the OP.
1. Yes, the pro does have the 16 GB emmc, but it is blank, like literally all zeroes. I haven't tried yet, but I presume if it was partitioned out correctly, it would work as you want. One thing to keep in mind: the different models are hardcoded to load fastboot and consequently the boot partition from their respective places. Specifically, the emmc model from the 16 GB emmc and the pro from the 8gb ssd of the hybrid drive. So, you would have to tweak the init files to mount the emmc partitions for the _hdd edition and reflash the boot image. Now also keep in mind, like mentioned before, you wouldn't be gaining space on the HDD by doing this. The 8gb ssd part of the HDD is what the /system, /cache, etc are on, while /data is on the spinny disk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I thought too.
I still would like to have a "bit by bit" copy of 16GB device EMMC to test what it takes to do it. Can you help me here?
Tilator said:
That's what I thought too.
I still would like to have a "bit by bit" copy of 16GB device EMMC to test what it takes to do it. Can you help me here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately I cannot. I also have the pro. What I may end up doing with mine is formating the emmc as a single partition to use as a Linux root partition.
Steel01 said:
Unfortunately I cannot. I also have the pro. What I may end up doing with mine is formating the emmc as a single partition to use as a Linux root partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, we are in the same boat here. I would like to put root on EMMC partition too, but also I would like to try partitioning EMMC exactly same way Nvidia does it. Bit to bit copy of a working device would do exactly that.
If Nvidia has done first stage boot loader "nice", it would first try to boot from HDD and if it does not work it would try EMMC. I suppose we all know what possibilities this would give us.
But, I'm still waiting to get my hands on a whole EMMC copy.
So - some update to previous discussion.
Thanks to an other user here I got the EMMC copy and it has been succesfully flashed. It's not a brick yet and I can confirm Pro version EMMC can be flashed with non-PRO versions EMMC copy. I have not had enough time to try to make somethin usefull with it yet. Next thing will be taking HDD out to find out if it boots from EMMC while it does not find OS from HDD or flashing non-PRO version boot loader to replace present one on HDD to see if it then loads root from EMMC. Bit by bit copy of first 4GB has been taken from HDD already just in case ...

[Nexus 7] Feasibility of replacing or upgrading Hynix HTC2G83CFR DDR3 RAM

Hi!
Having dug my old Google Nexus 7 2012 out of storage and found it both working and happy in terms of battery lifetime I let my mind wander towards fixing what I consider the main flaw with the device: Its 1 GB of system RAM.
Now, I have my fair share of microsoldering and idle work in BGA soldering and the like but my software hardware is far more lacking. I already know that the Nexus I have holds 4 x Hynix 2Gb HTC2G83CFR DDR3L RAM and the datasheets for it these are fortunately available, I also know that the Tegra T30L chipset supports up to 2GB of RAM. The closest I've been able to scrape together sofar are Hynix 4Gb H5TC4G43MFR but these use 78ball FBGA and 96ball FBGA, but atleast I'm on the right track in finding older chips...
This is where I run into the software knowledge lack; Simply finding fitting chips to replace the old ones and successfully soldering those on will not neccesarily just work out of the box? Depending on the kernel it might detect and make use of the new chips but it might also not.
Am I right in assuming that there will be a need for software side hacking to accomodate the upgrade?
On a sidenote I also found Daniel Sauvageau's musings on doing the exact same thing back in 2016 but there are no follow-ups to it. He does raise a concerning potential roadblock in his article on the matter:
"Find out, preferably in a non-destructive way, whether A15 is actually routed from the SoC to the DRAM BGAs. Without A15, I would need DDR3L DRAM that has 2KB pages instead of the typical 1KB ones found in all eight-bit-wide chips I have looked at. If neither are possible, then this idea is as good as dead"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any thoughts, ideas or inputs are welcome!
(Yes, I am aware that this is neither particularly economical nor for the faint of heart lacking a decent way to reball BGA)

Can you update 32GB RAM to 64GB?

Hello all.
I have a P905 model with 32GB RAM. But I've seen P900 models with 64GB.
Q1: Did the P905 come out with 64GB too, or only 32GB?
Q2: The RAM is probably a surface-mount IC (soldered to the mainboard). I haven't had a reason to open mine yet. Does anyone know where I can obtain a a picture showing which chip is the RAM?
Q3: If some P905 models do come with 64GB, and I find one with a broken screen, is there anything preventing me taking them to a shop with the correct gear to swap the RAM chips? For example, would the RAM size be the only difference, the other ICs the same, so the 64GB RAM will 'just work'? Or is there a second chip that checks the RAM, or something in firmware that will recognize the tablet shouldn't have 64GB and refuse to work?
Q4: I know the mainboards and processors of different models are different. But does anyone know if the RAM chip is the same? (Are 64GB RAM chips from different models compatible with the P905 too?)
Thanks for reading.
Whether you're truly talking about RAM or simply storage, the process, whether leading to successful expansion or not, will require very, very fine skills. You can find videos on YouTube of, for e.g., iPhone upgrade 512GB, MacBook Air 8GB upgrade, etc. The skills required for this type of work aren't likely to be trained overnight, even with the right equipment.
Mainly because of the density of solder balls present for each IC/BGA chip, and their small size. Everything must be perfect.
Thanks. I understand the process but don't own the equipment to rework surface mount components. It's probably come down a lot in price since I last looked but I'd probably only use it a couple of times. Easier/cheaper to go someplace that does it every day. I'll keep an eye out for a broken tablet to try it.

[nVidia Shield Pro] Increase RAM and eMMC

Good evening.
Was looking at my Shield Pro 2019 sitting on the shelf, and an idea popped into my head; would it be possible to upgrade RAM and eMMC chips? I have no particular reason for this, besides pure curiosity.
I've got access to professional solder equipment, including rework stations capable of desoldering BGAs, xray equipment to inspect said BGAs and about 20 years of experience with soldering and reworking complex circuitry.
If I'm not mistaken, RAM chips are either Micron, Samsung or SK Hynix and the eMMC chip would also likely be supplied by either Micron or SanDisk.
So, disregarding the physical job desoldering/resoldering chips, are there any software issues that must be taken into account?
The eMMC would of course need to be flashed and repartitioned if upgraded to a larger size, but would the RAM chips require any software modifications after swapping them out or would the system simply accept a larger RAM size out of the box?
I've Googled a bit, but couldn't find any concrete information on what changes would be required on the SW/FW side of this.
Best regards, Tim
Unfortunately, this looks like one of those things where ripping it apart and doing the do would be the way to go. Maybe the least "invasive" thing to do would be a RAM upgrade, provided compatible chips of higher capacity are available. Theoretically you wouldn't need to touch anything on the OS side for a bump in RAM capacity. I think the Tegra X1 supports a maximum of 4GB of RAM and the X1+ supports 8GB - allegedly. I suppose the memory controller is built into the SoC itself so there's no tampering with that.
I don't know anyone crazy enough to do that for me... nor am I really willing to apply my very amateur BGA soldering skills on a device like this one.
xxhyp0crisyxx said:
Good evening.
Was looking at my Shield Pro 2019 sitting on the shelf, and an idea popped into my head; would it be possible to upgrade RAM and eMMC chips? I have no particular reason for this, besides pure curiosity.
I've got access to professional solder equipment, including rework stations capable of desoldering BGAs, xray equipment to inspect said BGAs and about 20 years of experience with soldering and reworking complex circuitry.
If I'm not mistaken, RAM chips are either Micron, Samsung or SK Hynix and the eMMC chip would also likely be supplied by either Micron or SanDisk.
So, disregarding the physical job desoldering/resoldering chips, are there any software issues that must be taken into account?
The eMMC would of course need to be flashed and repartitioned if upgraded to a larger size, but would the RAM chips require any software modifications after swapping them out or would the system simply accept a larger RAM size out of the box?
I've Googled a bit, but couldn't find any concrete information on what changes would be required on the SW/FW side of this.
Best regards, Tim
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Both was already done on Nintendo switch (also tegra X1/X1+)
Emmc is the easy part, ram is possible but you need to know which ram are supported.
Check l4s discord maybe there are some people who can help.
Join the Linux 4 Switch Discord Server!
Check out the Linux 4 Switch community on Discord - hang out with 2,360 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
discord.gg

Categories

Resources