jprice@uclapp.physics.ucla.edu (John Price) (03/09/90)
2:00: SIMMS arrive via UPS 2nd day air. Total price, including shipping
and the 3% charge for plastic: $278.10. I start drooling. I look
at the enclosed instructions. They're not very helpful. They say
things like "Cut the resistor shown in the picture" - but there
isn't a picture. They recommend the use of the Dove toolkit -
perhaps this "picture" is in this kit. However, since I have the
instructions used by a friend, I'll just use those.
7:00: I've been waiting for the aforementioned friend to arrive with the
aforementioned instructions. He hasn't come yet. I start to
shake, and my face breaks out in a cold sweat. I call him at his
apartment from my office. He had forgotten to bring it in. So, I
go to his place and pick up the instructions.
8:00: I finally begin. After checking five or six times to make sure I'm
properly grounded (I'm not sure how important this really is, if
they can ship the SIMMS in bubblepak), I take out the screws
holding the Mac together. I then carefully break the case apart
with the case cracker. Etc., etc. I won't go into all the
details, but it amounts to opening up the Mac, removing two cables
from the motherboard, pulling the motherboard, replacing the SIMMS
- ah, yes. Replacing the SIMMS. Here, the instructions seemed a
little vague. I quote:
First, notice that each SIMM has a plastic tab on
each end. Gently pull the tabs outward to unlock
them. Be careful--the tabs break easily if forced.
I took this to mean that there was a lever-like thing that I would
pull out, and would then lock in an "open" position, and that after
I put the SIMMS in, I would return to a "closed" position. This is
*not* the case, and I wasted about 15 minutes trying to understand
how the SIMMS were installed. Now that I know, it's easy.
However, a good close-up picture would have helped tremendously.
The instructions, by the way, are from MacWarehouse. Except for
this, they are *excellent*. Well done, MacWarehouse. No, they
aren't paying me to say that. I didn't even buy the instructions
from them.
The "plastic tabs" are more like spring loaded clamps (those of you
who've done this, help me out in describing this - it's hard to
tell what you're doing the first time...). You pull them out
enough to let the SIMM free. When you install the new SIMMS, push
them in until the tab clicks into place. Remember not to push too
hard - you're probably a lot stronger than the Mac...
After replacing the SIMMS, clip a resistor that tells the Mac that
you're using 256K SIMMS, and reverse the steps to take the Mac
apart. Plug it back in, turn it on, and there you go. Note that
it will take longer to come on than it used to - there's more
memory to check...
9:00: Back up and running. No sweat... :)
Anyway, I found it pretty easy. While I must admit that I have had
some experience with electronics, I never would have tried it had I
not heard so many reports from other people who had done it.
Thanks to all of you for giving me the confidence to do it myself.
Gee, now I've got these four 256K SIMMS just sitting around... what
are they worth?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Price | Internet: jprice@uclapp.physics.ucla.edu
5-145 Knudsen Hall | BITNET: price@uclaph
UCLA Dept. of Physics | DECnet: uclapp::jprice
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1547 | YellNet: 213-825-2259
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where there is no solution, there is no problem.pdel@deimos.ADS.COM (Peter Delevoryas) (03/10/90)
I'm glad your installation went okay. I don't know if mine did. I just put another 2 meg in my Plus to bring it up to 4mb, and the first try at booting gave system error id=02. Ever since then, it will sometimes boot and sometimes sometimes error with that id # when I do a restart or shutdown. I don't know if this is the Simms, or my software, or what. It boots fine off a floppy system, and the hard disk boots fine on the other Mac cx here at work. It just doesn't seem to want to boot with a system on the hard disk. Also, after the crashes, I would lose things from my finder menu, but they would be in the folder. Really weird. I should also say that I'm relatively new to Macs, and computers, so I may be doing something really wrong; I don't know. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. I realize, though, that this is nothing that a few hundred dollars won't cure..... Peter D.
jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (03/12/90)
Now that we're on the subject... I have (4) 1 megabyte 80 nsec SIMMS that came out of a Sun 4. I believe that these SIMMS have parity on them. Is there any reason why I couldn't plug these SIMMS into my Mca IIcx along with my non-parity 1 meg SIMMs? I'm worried that, even if the SIMMS have the same number of pins, that they will either fry my machine or there will be incompatibilities amongst the modules. Anyone know if this is possible?
jprice@uclapp.physics.ucla.edu (John Price) (03/15/90)
In article <8427@potomac.ads.com>, jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) writes: >I have (4) 1 megabyte 80 nsec SIMMS that came out of a Sun 4. I >believe that these SIMMS have parity on them. This should be easy to tell. Unless I'm seriously mistaken, parity SIMMS will have 9 chips, and non-parity SIMMS will have 8 chips. Correct me please, gurus... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Price | Internet: jprice@uclapp.physics.ucla.edu 5-145 Knudsen Hall | BITNET: price@uclaph UCLA Dept. of Physics | DECnet: uclapp::jprice Los Angeles, CA 90024-1547 | YellNet: 213-825-2259 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where there is no solution, there is no problem.
Paul.Jacoby@p4.f22.n282.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Paul Jacoby) (03/16/90)
In a message of [15 Mar 90 06:35:00] John T. Nelson writes: >I have (4) 1 megabyte 80 nsec SIMMS that came out of a Sun 4. I >believe that these SIMMS have parity on them. Is there any reason why >I couldn't plug these SIMMS into my Mca IIcx along with my non-parity >1 meg SIMMs? I'm worried that, even if the SIMMS have the same number >of pins, that they will either fry my machine or there will be >incompatibilities amongst the modules. If it is any comfort, I am current running my Mac SE/30 with 4 meg of SIMMs from Technology Works (1 meg X 8) and 4 meg of SIMMs (1 meg X 9) that were borrowed from a Convergent Technologies 6000-series UNIX machine. The latter is basically a big 80386 PC that Unisys sells as one of it's mid-range UNIX platforms. The SIMMs work great, and the extra memory is a wonderful addition. -- Paul Jacoby - via FidoNet node 1:282/33 UUCP: ...!uunet!imagery!22.4!Paul.Jacoby ARPA: Paul.Jacoby@p4.f22.n282.z1.FIDONET.ORG
Randy.Shaw@f555.n161.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Randy Shaw) (03/27/90)
256k SIMMS seem to have a pretty low value...I am making my wife a pair of
earrings out of mine, for the MacWorld Expo coming up. You'll know us, she'll
have the earrings, I'll have the fan beanie on my head...
--
Randy Shaw - via FidoNet node 1:125/777
UUCP: ...!sun!hoptoad!fidogate!161!555!Randy.Shaw
INTERNET: Randy.Shaw@f555.n161.z1.FIDONET.ORG