I have a RAM memory board on my Deckel FP4NC inscribed NSP 56, which is 256k of RAM composed of 8 x 32K chips, 24 sockets are not filled. This board has a higher number than the one in my instruction manual. It would appear that as the size of memory chips increased Deckel made facility for increasing the amount of RAM. The main question is whether my board was able to be chipped up to 1 Meg. It came with all the remaining IC pin holes soldered up.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10205288@N08/2495731222/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/10205288@N08/2495731222/)

My good friend Steve has solder sucked all the closed holes (4 hours work) and put on IC sockets and the necessary capacitors. This board is therefore capable of being 1 Meg if fully populated. I have all the ICs ready.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10205288@N08/2495732286/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/10205288@N08/2495732286/)
Picture 2 shows the solder contacts, which will probably have to be linked in some manner. Steve reckons that this information will have been highly secret at Deckel as this is how they could sell a new more expensive board for vastly more than the cost of the chips. A photograph of such a board would be great as we can copy the linkages or perhaps unlikely a paper instruction on what to link. Does anyone have a similar NSP board, which is fully populated to 256k or 1Meg of which we could have a picture.

I did see about a year ago an advert on e-bay for a guy selling boards with extended memory for Deckels. I presume that they were NSP 56 or 55s and appeared to have a lump stuck on the side with epoxy resin to cover the chip number and links. They were fearfully expensive. If we can crack this one it means that all Deckels should be capable of having the memory extended.

Steve also reckons that it would be easy to write a Wizard in Mach 3 to output programs in ‘Decalese’

Also for beginners please note the old Saft battery has been removed and a new flyer with 3 x 1.3v nicads attached. There are three back up batteries, which should be replaced on a FP4NC machine. It took me 9 months to find out about the third!

All help gratefully received

Regards
John

3.07 was the highest SW Level for the Dialog 4 that was ever built.
And you do not only need some Eproms with SW on it you also
need some hardware updates.

There where two different NSP versions the ones for the D4
(Standard for D4 NSP 55 256kB) and the ones normally used for C3 (NSP 56?)
The NSP56 was available at 128, 256, 512 and 1024 kB.
If your D4 has the NSP56 you can solder more memory to it.


regards
Deckeldoctor

Many thanks

My machine is Dialogue 4 with 2.33 version software and the NSP 56 board, which has now had the extra sockets added. Should I just have a go and add the chips?

I have now seen the comments on this on Practical Machinist and I would suspect that the jumpers would need resetting to address the new RAM blocks at least. Does anyone have a NSP56 circuit diagram or a picture of a 1 Meg board?

Regards
John