sorry s/FPGA/BGA/g Re: Some thoughts: "1GB flash hack possible? Or why not shipping 1GB directly?"

[Pierre Hébert]

Hi !

On Wednesday 24 January 2007 11:16, Robert Michel wrote:
> > Once I get my hands on one of these babies the first thing I'm going
> > to be doing is taking it to pieces, and I can pretty much guarantee
> > once we see the flash chip we'll be able to find a compatible
> > replacement. But surface mount soldering/desoldering is a sensitive
> > process and takes practice, and you do not want to be practicing on
> > your $350 phone.
>
> oh, I will :) I many years ago I upgraded my Palm Pilot to 8MB
> and did some other practice - so soldering flash will be not easy,
> but not inpossible. It's possible to train with the usb flash device.

Sure it was a lot of fun to do these sort of things. I was myself really 
proud to upgrade my HP48G to 128M of memory, after having bought a 
similar component in a IC store. It was possible when pin spacing was 
1/10 or even 1/20 inch, but know take a look at our actual devices : the 
components are so fine that it is not possible to do that by hand.

> > So my answer to your question is: perhaps not from your USB memory
> > stick, but you will be able to upgrade the flash chip if you've a
> > little experience with surface mount hacking.
> >
> > But I have a more important question: why do you want to do this?
>
> Why hacking? Because it is possible and it is fun :))
Yes it is fun (I love that too), but really is not possible to do that on 
the built-in flash.

> > I don't
> > see the 64MB as at all limiting when there's a microsd slot to hand,
> > and 4GB microsd cards almost available to buy.
>
> Right, me too. But Seans statment that we shouldn't do expect to much
> transfer speed from/to microSD gives anouther reason than "just for
> fun".
Speed depends more on the type of memory used, than the way it is access. 
In case of the s3c2410, the periphal bus transfer speed is beyond the 
current cards speed. So (fortunately or unfortunately) you will get 
rather similar performances between internal flash and "external" 
flash :-( (around several Mb/s max)

regards,

Pierre.