Axim Advance 128mb Upgrade

**Chris Leckness** · 05-09-03, 07:46 AM

I have been Secretly testing this upgrade and it has been great. Hesse, Our Editor, will be doing a write up/review on this service soon.

Dell X5 Advanced Series 128MB Stacked Internal RAM Upgrade

Description: Upgrade your Axim's internal RAM from 64MB to 128MB with our upgrade service. This is our Stacked Upgrade that uses the standard-density chips and requires a modified BIOS. We add an additional 64MB to your system for a total of 128MB. 64MB is managed by memory manager and 64MB is a hi-speed internal storage card named T2T Disk. Price: $99.00

tutut17 · 05-09-03, 07:55 AM

is this possible with the basic model? how much would it cost?

Namo · 05-09-03, 08:24 AM

$100 for 64MB extra memory? doesn't seem worth it when you can buy 64MB external cheaper than that :/

jinwenbo · 05-09-03, 08:27 AM

I agree, it seems better to just buy the external memory, I am not sure why you would need to upgrade internally.

shadowfox777 · 05-09-03, 08:49 AM

For $100 I'll buy a 512MB CF card.

cmcFilms · 05-09-03, 08:52 AM

This seems like a much more useful service for PDAs with only one expansion slot...

Pepsi_blue · 05-09-03, 09:33 AM

Well put it this way with a CF or SD card you can not use it as program memory....

But with the 128 mb you can use it for your program memory...I rember one program required 20 mb of program memory

05-09-03, 09:56 AM

I know you guys have a lot of questions about this upgrade service. I am receving my upgraded unit today and will post the review article on Monday. So stay tuned!!

Here is a quote from PPC Techs about 300Mhz unit upgrade:

Quote:

We can upgrade the 300Mhz units, but the OS image has been hardcoded for a maximum conventional memory of 32MB. So the 128MB upgrade would be seen as 32MB conventional and 96MB as our T2T Disk. Cost would be $149 + shipping. We currently do NOT plan on releasing this upgrade since the base
memory cannot be increased.

And here is what PPC Techs thinks the benefits of upgrade are:

Quote:

Speed. Our T2T Disk access speed is up to 100x faster than SD or CF sinceit is SDRAM, not compressed and is accessed directly by the CPU.

Secure, since it can't be lost or misplaced.

Programs can be installed to the T2T Disk leaving conventional memory free for operating RAM. The user doesn't have to worry about a program being installed on one card and needing access to another card that has their data.

I believe this is a great option.

BubbaJonBoy · 05-09-03, 10:00 AM

I'd have to agree with the others on this one. Can we have details on:
(o) why this would be a good thing
(o) can programs execute from it
(o) what are the implications if Dell releases a PC2003 upgrade
(o) advantages over a SD or CF card - besides the obvious free slot.
I'd love for this to be a win-win as I tend to pack a lot of crap on my Axim! :p

Regards, Jon

05-09-03, 10:26 AM

I don't know about you guys, but I can't live without my Axim for even 1 day. :D

I'll wait to read the review from hesse, but I can't imagine this being worth it for my uses. I prefer to switch out CF and SD cards as needed. But I'm sure someone who needs to have thier CFIO card in all the time might appreciate it.

Also I see myself upgrading to the next Axim in the fall (if it comes out), so spending money on a part that I can't take with me seems like a waste.

I look forward to the review and learning more about the upgrade. This is great news because we are now seeing options that were only available for iPAQ users now available for the Axim.

NMkiD · 05-09-03, 10:28 AM

Sweet, I was wonderign abotu this just the other day, I have another question for when you get your unit back, I wonder if it is faster in general useage, liek menus and things like scrolling in a word document and loading images from a CF card, things like that. If it is great, if not, well...

Also if you perform a hard reset all that memory is gone correct?
This would make it hard to do a backup very well, the backup, say with pocket backup plus woudl be pretty large, it would have to take up a lot of room on the memory card... hmm tradeoffs I guess.

pamunkey · 05-09-03, 11:06 AM

How will this affect warranty service? I am thinking that Dell will not honor the warranty.

05-09-03, 11:27 AM

I just received my unit... Will do a extensive testing over the weekend... so just be patient for a few days.. :)

I will definitely address all the questions you have in my review. The article will be up on Monday evening.

To give you guys a few quick answers...

1. Hard-reset will erase everything in the extra storage since it's RAM still.

2. Looks like access speed is faster for this new RAM... My Axim seems to be running a lot faster now... Will have to run some benchmarks.

3. You can use this space just like you would with other storage space, store data and install programs. It will be the fastest storage option among all the options, I believe.

4. Release of PPC2k3 shouldn't have any affect on this. When they release the new OS, it will be loaded onto ROM. And this upgrade is for RAM. Of course, I think PPC Techs will have to provide an updated driver. From my experiences with PPC Techs staffs, I believe they will get on it as soon as possible.

5. Back-up was on top of my list of possible issues. I am planning to contact SpriteSoftware to see if they can add an option to backup this new storage space. Will also test using ActiveSync backup... Not a great hope there either, though...

Jwilker · 05-09-03, 01:11 PM

One major benefit I would think over just another CF card. When using my WiFi card, I lose my CF slot and my apps. I only keep unimportant stuff on SD since I've had it drop stuff. It'd be kinda nice to have someplace to drop apps too when the CF slot is used.

bummer about the 32mb version.

sarin_j · 05-09-03, 01:17 PM

To overcome the restriction in the OS, is there any patch that Dell can release, so that 300 MHz users can also take advantage of this upgrade ? IMHO, this is a good option, coz its likely to speedup the program execution and will also take care of storage problem for many users.