BMDC memory upgrade

[emvali]

Hi everyone,

My TC4 BMDC has 512K of program memory.

Is there a way to upgrade (increase) it?

Thanks

[machintek]

There was a BMDC4. It was used on the EZSURF. You have a BMDC3. I believe the BMDC4 has a 4MB memory sim on it. But it will cost about $5000.00 dollars from EMI. Call them for the correct price.

George

[emvali]

You are right, it is a 3 Ver.C
I know I am geting a bit into electronics, but after all I am an electronics engineer.

The BMDC has 4 chips, 128K X 8 bit each.

On the board, under each of the 4 memory ICs, there are 2 options of mounting, I mean there are 2 interlaced rows of pin pads. The existing chips ar installed on the left side option.

What I wonder, is if the right side is for the 256K older board or for the BMDC4 with the 4M.

My guess is it is the older 256K option.

Before I tear apart a K$ PCB with experiments, you mentioned a SIM 4MB, you mean a separate card with the memory on it, like the one used in the PC?

[machintek]

Yes, it had a snap in RAM SIM on the bottom. Similar to that used on 486 type mother boards.

George

[NC Cams]

EMI indicatdd to me that the BMDC4 would not work in place of a BMDC3.

As far as motherboard memory, simply load up what your motherboard will tolerate and set sail. DOS will then access as needed as long as you have a HIMEM manager loaded and working in the AUTEEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file. IT does help to exit to DOS and run MEMMAKER when/if you install/activate HIMEM.

Recall however that the BMDC DX32 software will only access what it is capable of accessing. If the BMDC program is capable of using HIMEM, it will use it. If not, it wont matter how much memory you install.

I"d be willing to bet that the BMDC3 card is preprogrammed to use the memory it has. If you add more, you won't see any benefit as the software doesn't know it is there so it won't use it. To find our for sure, go to the Motorola website and D/L the PDF's for U1 and U2 on the BMDC. I have them but have no way to attach them to this post.

WE ran into this problem with LBA mode access with our CMOS and HDD on our Extrak. WE turned LBA on and the BMDC software started to place data all over the place on the HDD. Eventually the machine would not run properly because it could not FIND the data it had scattered..

Turns out LBA did not exist when the BMDC software was created. Hence, the machine would write in LBA but it didn't know how to find/read the data via LBA read/write system. Same deal probably exists on the BMDC3 AFIK.