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

[Robert Michel]

Salve Justyn!

Justyn Butler schrieb am Mittwoch, den 24. Januar 2007 um 00:47h:
> Firstly apologies if I've misunderstood what you're saying.
:) When it' my failing...

> But I think it
> is: "can I use the flash chip from inside a USB memory stick to upgrade the
> neo1973 flash?"
yes

> 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.

> 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 :))

> 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".

And in every town is some specialist which will be able to solder you
this flash perfectly - in case for people with no experiances, to much
respect or in case that they overestimate their skills and got into
trouble while soldering - as long you do not swith on the power,
nothing (beside of the warranty) is lost.


But the important point in which model/Package Type of the flash will 
be used for the Neo1973 - and I speculated that it will be 
SLC(Small Block) and maybe even FBGA.
And I guess that USB flash memory devices did not use SLC(Small Block)
- or maybe this will be in *very* small devices ;)


> Lastly, what is meant by the comment about FPGAs? I kind of got the
> impression that you're suggesting the main SoC is replaced with an FPGA,
no, mean FBGA instead of FPGA - because there is also the name FPBGA it
is a little bit confusing for me, when I didn't use this terms often.
I should use BGA (Ball Grid Array) and should avoid using abbrevations.

So I know that there are some (private) hardware hackers working even
with BGAs - but when the flash is soldered as BGA it is unpossible for
most of us.

Sorry for the confusion,
rob