"Jonathan Anthony" <jonathan@jonathan.abda.net> writes:

> Again, back to the ram... most common sense says it can't be done, as well,
> would the dreamcast work if you changed the ram?  Or upgraded it.  I assume
> netbsd would gladly handle the extra ram.. "I assume"  -tell me if I'm wrong
>
> So I'd like to hear any arguments for or against the possibilities of
> upgrading the ram in a dreamcast, and still having a functional
> dreamcast/bsd machine.

It's certainly possible to expand the RAM, but it will involve various
degrees of solderwork, and some changes to the NetBSD kernel to
actually use the extra mem.

The simplest solution would be to piggy back a second set of identical
RAM chips on top of the existing ones.  That would give you an extra
16 MB, with minimum amount of work.  You'd have to route the chip
select lines to an unused pin on the CPU, but the address and data
pins can be shared with the original chips.  The downside is that you
won't get so much extra ram (just another 16M), and the memory will
not be contigous (not so much of a problem when running NetBSD, since
the kernel remaps the memory using the MMU anyway).

Theoretically a full 128M could be installed, but that would require
larger alterations to the motherboard.


  // Marcus