[HowTo] Upgrading RAM to 128 MB (WL-500gP, WL-500W and WL-700gE)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Inertial

Hello!



Most of my inspiration came by looking at these pieces of information: (attached below)

* BCM4704 Block Diagram

* BCM4704 System Diagram

Well besides the gpio pins, I2C bus, SPI bus, SD card, etc type hacks, (directly off wl500gp pcb tracks), the most promising thing, may be the ability of BCM4704 processor to handle three mini-PCI 2.3 peripherals.

---

Great!

Count me in. I have bit limited time now, as I'm in a middle of a NAS building project based on the StormSemi Gemini SL3516. Adding mini PCI slot would be great. I have already found miniPCI Sata controller with flash support. It would be an interesting project to build a small embendded server based on the new ssd disks. Also the networked weather station sounds like a great idea. If it would support mesh architecture and and seismology (vibration sensors) coupled with a solar panel and some batteries it could make up for a great science platform for earthquake forecasting.
At the moment I'm working on a more mundane project though. I have a flat what I rent out what happens to be in a very lucky spot of the city so I can get 10M/10M cable net connected on it. Even though I live only four streets away, this option is not available here, so I'm building a torrent seed server for the other flat. I will be able to log in and start downloads remote, and when the download finished it will syncronise automatically to my home nas trough sftp. I'd like to connect a security camera tooking to an area what not interferes with their life (eg. entrance), but helps if something happens with the flat. Also would like to connect smoke sensors to send alarm trough the net. I would like to have everything in one neat package (so HDD inside the case, proper cooling etc) to avoid accidental disconnects, ect.
Meanwhile the tenant will be able to use some part of the bandwidth trough wireless - with a QOS service - for a reduced fee. For this I'll most probably use my current 500gP and buy a new 500W for our home.

ps.: In the meantime I just finished a second transplant to 128 Mb on a friend's asus. Flawless, started right away and stable.

ps2: Do you think that the factory power supply is enough to power all your installed ports? I had unexpected reboots even when tried to connect the USB HDD and a flash disk at the same time.

ps3:Probably we should start a new one about HW hacking instead of hijacking this 128Mb upgrade topic.

Is this howto good for upgrading WL.-500GP v2 RAM to 128MB?

This info is intended to help uprading ram in BCM47xx based routers.
The v2 version is based on a BCM5354 all-in-one chip what is theoretically able to handle 128MB ram, but so far I haven't seen any picture taken of a v2 board, so I cannot tell how it had been realised.
You can find a brief introduction on 5354 here

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Oyabun

This info is intended to help uprading ram in BCM47xx based routers.
The v2 version is based on a BCM5354 all-in-one chip what is theoretically able to handle 128MB ram, but so far I haven't seen any picture taken of a v2 board, so I cannot tell how it had been realised.
You can find a brief introduction on 5354 here

---

You can find pictures here:
https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/oet/f...ive_or_pdf=pdf

I have a WL-500GP v2 on my hand.
I have disassembled it and I have found the RAM. There are only one chip: the Hynix HY5DU561622ETP

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Garluk

I have a WL-500GP v2 on my hand.
I have disassembled it and I have found the RAM. There are only one chip: the Hynix HY5DU561622ETP

---

So if you google for this chip, you can find, that it is a 16Mx16 chip, resulting in 32MB. As single. Theoretically it means, that this router (because of the one-chip design) could not be upgraded to 128, but 64MB.
As it should be the actual case, as on the reference pictures linked by Serge (thanks :)) the chip on board is a Samsung K4H511638D what is used by many of us, giving 64MB/chip capacity.
So if you are interested in upgrading your router to 64MB the steps are the folowing:
- Check router board for missing resistors (if any), as on the previous boards A12 address line has not been implemented -it might be the case in the new version also.
- Cross check memory addressing parameters with Oleg, how to enable 64Mb on a single chip for v2 routers.
- Acquire a single Samsung K4H511638D or equivalent chip with 32Mx16 capacity (look above Inertial's post about compatible chips)
- Do the phisical upgrade (or better to ask someone with good soldering skills and a rework station to do is for you)
- Check it with Oleg's memtest
- Enable 64 MB
- Recheck
- Enjoy

Hope it helps.
BR.
Tamas

status report: A friend of mine just finished upgrading the router sucessfully to 128MB, and also added connectors for the two additional USB ports with neat routing and proper coupling. I have finished installation of an external diversity antenna (instead of the PCB one) and installed 2x 5dB antennaes. :-) No dropped connection since, 54 Mbit/s maintained everywhere, fastest Wlan as ever with this router. :-)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Oyabun

ps3:Probably we should start a new one about HW hacking instead of hijacking this 128Mb upgrade topic.

---

Appologies for disappearing for so long, and especially to Oyabun. A software development project, with tight deadlines, tons of mathematical modeling and mobile platform optimization, landed on my head. I was on it day and night since nearly my last post. I mannaged, though, to succesfully upgrade to 128MB yet another wl500gP, while having a short break :D Well I will follow Oyabun's advice and start a new thread under the "WL-500gP Pics & Specs" section. This choice is justified, in the sense that hardware hacks actually affect the specs, and even improve them i would suggest ;)

It will be entitled: "Exploring WL500gP hardware expansion / interfacing possibilities", hope it sounds promising...

See you there...

Inertial

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Oyabun

So if you google for this chip, you can find, that it is a 16Mx16 chip, resulting in 32MB. As single. Theoretically it means, that this router (because of the one-chip design) could not be upgraded to 128, but 64MB.
As it should be the actual case, as on the reference pictures linked by Serge (thanks :)) the chip on board is a Samsung K4H511638D what is used by many of us, giving 64MB/chip capacity.
So if you are interested in upgrading your router to 64MB the steps are the folowing:
- Check router board for missing resistors (if any), as on the previous boards A12 address line has not been implemented -it might be the case in the new version also.
- Cross check memory addressing parameters with Oleg, how to enable 64Mb on a single chip for v2 routers.
- Acquire a single Samsung K4H511638D or equivalent chip with 32Mx16 capacity (look above Inertial's post about compatible chips)
- Do the phisical upgrade (or better to ask someone with good soldering skills and a rework station to do is for you)
- Check it with Oleg's memtest
- Enable 64 MB
- Recheck
- Enjoy

Hope it helps.
BR.
Tamas

status report: A friend of mine just finished upgrading the router sucessfully to 128MB, and also added connectors for the two additional USB ports with neat routing and proper coupling. I have finished installation of an external diversity antenna (instead of the PCB one) and installed 2x 5dB antennaes. :-) No dropped connection since, 54 Mbit/s maintained everywhere, fastest Wlan as ever with this router. :-)

---

Your's friend have upgraded a v1 o v2 WL-500gP router?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Garluk

Your's friend have upgraded a v1 o v2 WL-500gP router?

---

Sorry. Of course v1.

It is possible to test all the 128MB RAM, cause doing ./memtest 128MB only tests 64-67MB. I've tryed "free" and i've got 124MB free without any services running, it should test at least 124MB. This way i will never know if the other module of 64MB it's OK or not. Any ideas?

Just curious but is there anyone here that can do this upgrade for me? I have no experience on SMD chips. I will probably get another unit for this upgrade so that my current one isn't affected and I will continue to have 2 "stock" units.

I wonder if there is anyway to solder some TSOP slot first in place of U3 and U4 the sort of those seen on many OLD 4Mb PCI video cards, just to allow easily exchange the RAM on WL500. Anyone tried ?

Dear Vuk,

I am planning to use some Meritec TSOP-48 sockets for the flash chip, not sure if i'll do so *on* the board of the router, there are clearence issues. Meritec doesn't do TSOP-66, (since they are not used for flash chips, i think)

Thought of hacking some piece of something to do what you describe, but this would be difficult, in reality. Anyway, that's what came to my mind:

-> Either to make a fixture to press the chip pins directly on solder-wicked, cleaned, and kinda, DIY, atmospheric-pressure "hot-air-kind-of-leveled" pads :)

-> Or use these very nice elastic 1D-conductive strips, the ones employed to transfer the current to glass substrate LCD dot-matrix screens (grey conductive something, sandwiched in pink elastic). I have some of this somewhere, have to test resistance and most of all, the pitch of these conductors, to avoid shorting everything. Then a way to hold and press everything in place will have to be devised.

Proceeding in these ways ofcourse would make it very hard to tell if the problem comes from the chip under test OR the fixture :p

The sockets you mention are a great idea, i will give it a try for sure if i manage to find any and report the results back here.

The second best thing that comes to my mind is to use 3M's z-plane conductive tape, but i can't afford it - far too expensive.

Looking through quite some of the boxes that comprise my old hardware collection (others call it junk :rolleyes: ), nothing like 66-tsop sockets was found...

So please, could you direct us to some photos of the video cards in question. Or at least to some model names/numbers and manufacturer's names.


Inertial

Well, actualy i remembered and old ATI pci 4Mb card i had once (1998 perhaps), but I never counted the pins in the TSOP socket. Anyway, i am sure there are 66 pin versions for that.
Another ideea came to me was the same as yours, to replace the EEPROM with a larger one, say... 128Mb from a flash disk and put it in a TSOP socket. Because I found a similar HYNIX chip inside a flash disk of mine.
Still don`t know how to copy the entire code inside to make it boot again.
Whatever, that would allow to store a richer operating system inside on a larger storage space and to use external usb laptop hdd just for user space, accounts and downloads, etc.
QUESTION: wl500 is a multilayer or plain dual layer PCB ? :D

Hi, guys

I have tears in my eye, I was able to upgrade to 128Mb.
First of all I could not get the correct Samsung chips.
For this I bought two chips from Trucki.
Secondly I did not had the "hand skill" for soldering.
For this I turned for everybody. My neighbor worked in a place where they had professional soldering gear, but there I as a stranger could not enter, so initially I asked around everywhere who can do it, I wanted to see and to be able to try it and if wrong re solder it. Could not find nobody. Oyabun volunteered, but he was busy in private life. So finally I gave my router to my neighbor to do it in a blind way and if turns out good than turns out good.
And it turned out good. :-)
It is so good. :-):-):-)
Next thing I will be asking around how to set up the development environment and trying to port the DC++ client. :-)

Install amule instead of porting dc+. Quick description for optware is at http://trac.nslu2-linux.org/optware/wiki

Is that possible to upgrade ram of ASUS 520gU to 128MB?
It has the same cpu but is different frequency.

pop k.

Is there anyone of u who has an extra pair of chips for sale, or knows a reliable source tu buy those ? I mean the chips described by Oleg in http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=12962

Thank you!

I've managed to buy one of these laptop memory modules on ebay.co.uk ...

I doubt someone will ship to Romania :)

I have a few K4H511638B-TCB3 left if anyone needs.

Hi!
Here I have two Hynix HY5DU561622ETP Chips (16Mx16) from my bricked D-Link DNS-323. As I read in this thread one chip from that type is used in the v2.

Can I use these two chips for an upgrade from 32 to 64 MB? Or where do i get the recommended chips best? Neighter Hynix nor Samsung provide any free samples on their website like other companies do (TI for example) :(

Greeting, Sally

my waranty is almoast gone, so I was thinking of upgrading the memory too..
I can get the transcent memory, for 11 euro only:p

now I'm wondering, I'm not really super pro at soldering, but I've done it before with a point soldering torch.

How do I get these chips from their wat is it... sockets?
those pins aren't made of tin is it?:p


If I look at these images: http://www.wl500g.info/showpost.php?...0&postcount=30
then I see that in the 2nd image all the pins are melted away, including some parts of the chip... I mean, it looks a bit rough and very dangerous to do:p

If someone can explain me how to get these chips off properly without burning them away, I would be happy:D

The best way to solder/desolder such chips - is to use hot air gun or hot air station. It may be professional (ERSA, PACE), hobbiest (AOYUE-6031 Sirocco, AOYUE-908, etc.) or even good workers hot air gun (Makita HG650 for example) with small nozzle.

Some people upgrade router with an old soldering torch only, but this is not so accurate and require much time.

I strongly recommend you to train on something else before hacking router, for example - old PC expansion cards, motheboards, etc.

Anyway, you have to use good paste Flux (for example, http://www.efd-inc.com/Solder/Flux/ - good, but expensive) and always check quality of soldered pins. Most comfortable is to use stereo microscope, but magnifying glass is acceptable too.

thanks for your advice:D
I'll do some practice first yes.
never used flux on sutch a small thing tho, I used it for soldering big metal things together:p

I also found a good instruction video:
http://curiousinventor.com/guides/Su..._Soldering/101

it looks easy, as long as you have a steady hand I guess:)
need to get myself a new soldering iron, one with a temperature regulator:rolleyes:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wpte

it looks easy, as long as you have a steady hand I guess:)
need to get myself a new soldering iron, one with a temperature regulator:rolleyes:

---

Yes, it is right decision, since our router is "Lead Free" and this dramatically increase demands to temperature profile!
You mustn't mix ordinary and LeadFree solder, i.e. you have to remove one before apply another.

Hi,
i tried to upgrade my router with two NANYA NT5DS32M16BS-5T, but it seems that one of the two chips is damaged. When I enable only 32MB of U3 everything works fine, also memtest shows no errors, but when I enable U4 and the whole 128MB the router shows some errors during boot:

Code:

---

SQUASHFS error: lzma returned unexpected result 0x1
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 4000e, size 4769
SQUASHFS error: lzma returned unexpected result 0x1
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 4000e, size 4769
SQUASHFS error: lzma returned unexpected result 0x1
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 4000e, size 4769
Segmentation fault
/linuxrc: /linuxrc: 35: cannot create /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug: Directory nonexistent
Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 43fc6034, epc == 8002d700, ra == 8002cdac
Oops in fault.c::do_page_fault, line 192:
$0 : 00000000 10008800 43fc601c efffffff 810b1dd4 00000060 83fc60e0 83fc6020
$8 : 10008801 00001f02 000043d1 00003d4a 2aaa8238 2abb24a8 00000000 00000000
$16: 810b1dd4 00000000 810b1ddc 000000f0 810aeba8 00004985 810fa2d0 802d0000
$24: 00000000 00453d88                  803c2000 803c39d0 803c3bc8 8002cdac
Hi : fffffff9
Lo : ffffffa0
epc  : 8002d700    Not tainted
Status: 10008802
Cause : 00000008
Process insmod (pid: 13, stackpage=803c2000)
Stack:    803c39d0 803c39d0 8103176c 8002750c 00000000 00000c00 00000400
 00000000 8002cdac 802e64ec 00000001 00000014 810fa2d0 8002fe3c 80039870
 00000000 00000000 810aeba8 80025dbc 810e5740 00000000 800399e0 80016548
 803c3ac8 802e5120 00000014 810aeba8 00000001 00000400 00000050 00001f02
 8003c048 811fb120 00000001 00000002 00000014 802e5120 00000014 00000400
 8003c2bc ...
Call Trace:  [<8002750c>] [<8002cdac>] [<8002fe3c>] [<80039870>] [<80025dbc>]
 [<800399e0>] [<80016548>] [<8003c048>] [<8003c2bc>] [<80022374>] [<80022300>]
 [<8000a8fc>] [<80039308>] [<80092934>] [<80095a68>] [<8000c43c>] [<80026468>]
 [<80020228>] [<8000c43c>] [<80095f30>] [<8001684c>] [<800b619c>] [<800b5d44>]
 [<8001670c>] [<80046974>] [<80016548>] [<800b6154>] [<800160cc>] [<80002134>]
 [<80030238>] [<801a120c>] [<8002562c>] [<80030238>] [<800256d0>] [<80027428>]
 [<8002750c>] [<80022258>] [<80022300>] [<80020770>] [<800225b4>] ...

Code: 00031080  00471021  00650018 <8c440018> 2402ffff  ace40014  00001812  10820012  00c33021
Segmentation fault
Segmentation fault
Segmentation fault
Segmentation fault
/linuxrc: /linuxrc: 54: cannot create /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug: Directory nonexistent
Segmentation fault
Segmentation fault

---

The soldering seems to be fine (I have quite a bit of SMD soldering experience), and I also added the cap to UDQS of U4.
Can someone tell me, if it's possible to activate the whole 64MB of U3 whitout activating U4, or if its possible to activate only U4 without activating U3?
BR Peter

Ok, i managed to enable the the 64Mb of U3 without enabling U4 with sdram_init=0x0013 . Infos about the sdram configuration can be found here: http://oleg.wl500g.info/sdram.html .

edit: Good news! After enabling the 64Mb of U3, I ran a memtest, which found no errors. So I changed U4, resoldered it, set sdram_init to 0x0011 and the router booted! Now I'm running a memtest on both chips.

For everyone who wants to upgrade the memory, I suggest to set sdram_init to 0x0013 after changing U3 (and before changing U4), and running a memtest on the chip (with ./memtest 32M).

Thanks to Oleg for this nice mod and his great firmware!

Br Peter

Well... I think I finally got my stuff ready, except for the memory module, since I get confused a bit:o

allright:
the samsung chips are 64MB x 64bit each, so you get a 512MB total in one module...
the transcent chips are however only 32MB x 64bit each, so you only have a 256 module...

now I guess I can not upgrade the router to 128MB with the transcent chips since there can only be 2 chips placed on the routers mobo:confused:

transcent: http://www.transcendusa.com/Support/...64V3M_1180.pdf
samsung: http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datashe...24BT0-CB3.html

or am I completely wrong here:p
the samsung ones are not really easy to be found somewhere here in europe.

I have been searching for a memory module too and found out that the chips on the Kingston KVR333X64SC25/512 that is listed in this thread are not usable. They are 32M x 8-bit (8M x 8-bit x 4 Bank) DDR333 SDRAM sealed in uBGA packages. See http://www.valueram.com/datasheets/K...64SC25_512.pdf.

Maybe they used to have the right chips and Kingston changed them...

Better check the datasheets before you buy one.
The Transcend module seems OK: http://www.transcendusa.com/Support/...3M_1184_s1.pdf

well... still it's 64MB
or I should say this: because the processor is 32bit, it will be able to adress only 32bit of the 64bit lane on the RAM module, so you get double space and it becomes 128MB:rolleyes:

but that seems to be really theoretical:confused:

I just received the Transcend module.
It has Hynix chips nowadays so if you are looking for Samsung or Elpida chips don't buy this module.

If you do buy this module, you can 'harvest' the 22ohm resistors from R1-R8 from the chip-side of the module or R9-R16 from the back-side. To get the clock timings right I will try to transplant one of the capacitors C26-C29 from the back-side the way NotebookKiller suggested.

To Wpte: each chip has 32M addresses storing 16bits (2 bytes, one word) of data each. That makes 2Bx32M=64MB per chip so the two chips will get you 128MB. For reading/writing a single byte the chips have UDQS and LDQS pins to activate the upper or lower byte only. See the datasheet http://www.hynix.com/datasheet/pdf/d...TP(Rev0.3).pdf

My WL-500W router was dead after I enabled U4. I used Hynix chip. I already soldered a 5pf capacitor at pin 51. It looks like the CFE isn't running. I couldn't see any output from the serial console.

Is there a way to disable U4 without booting into the system?

To Pim Borst:

Do you know which lines the capacitor should be soldered? It isn't very clear on the photo attached in NotebookKiller's post. There are two lines that are very close to each other.

Hi Andrew,

The two lines that are close to each other are the clock lines indeed.
I removed some of the PCB mask and measured that they are connected to CK and /CK of the chips (see the datasheet in earlier post).

Wednesday a colleague of mine is going to help me with the upgrade. He has professional hot-air soldering equipment. I hope it will work. Good luck with your WL500, I hope you get it working again!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by andrewr

To Pim Borst:

Do you know which lines the capacitor should be soldered? It isn't very clear on the photo attached in NotebookKiller's post. There are two lines that are very close to each other.

---

I tried to upgrade my wl500gp v1 to 128m using this guide.

I salvaged some chips from an SDRAM board (Nanya 32x16).

I installed U3 successfully and ran memtest against it overnight with no errors.

I installed U4, and after some solder touchups it booted fine. I configured the settings for 128m and rebooted and it came up. Memtest ran up to test 14 and then reported an error. It had a total of 3 errors after the first iteration.

I shut it down to touch up my joints and haven't been able to get it boot since. I can only assume that bad joints are causing the problem. I will get some flux and have another go at it (I installed without the use of flux the first time). Any other tips?

An update...

I picked up some solder paste. I was surprised that the local shop here (Active Surplus in Toronto) didn't have plain flux, but I think that the paste worked better for me.

Without removing the chips, I smeared some paste on the U4 contacts and just heated each solder joint. This worked well -- I could hear the flux burning off and could see the solder flowing into the joints. Under magnification, the joints looked a lot better after this process

Of course, it still didn't boot. SO, despite my certainty that U3 was working well (see my prior post) I gave the same treatment to U3 and lo and behold everything worked after that. I used SCP to get memtest onto the router (this was far easier than configuring the router connected to the internet) and will run memtest next.

So, a $3 tin of solder paste was the solution and I have about $2.99 of it left to spare. Cool!

Hi there people !
This might be mostly adressed to Oleg...
I tried to apply the instruction from this oleg`s tutorial. But i DID NOT (stupid me ) aplied

nvram set sdram_init=0x000b
nvram set sdram_config=0x0032
nvram commit
halt

before every chip exchange, neither upgrading to 128Mb aware firmware.
Now, after purely replacing chips and soldering 33ohm to R43, the router seem to be bricked as power led is off, wifi led is half-lit barely observable, and the switch section works ok, leds on, etc. Of course, the router does not boot :).
Is this a matter of PIN9 trick (i did it once succesfuly) or i have to replace with old chips, remove r43, and take the job from begining again ?

Looking forward for an sugestion..

Vuk

Hi folks,

can you imagine, that this RAM mod could also work for other routers. I have one Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with only 16MB of RAM, so it would be great applying this RAM mod to my router too. (Even though I was successfully been able to make the "SD mod" on my router and now it's possible to SWAP ON some space on the installed SD card which is limited only by the free SD card space, but you can figure out, that this is not the everfastest RAM upgrade possible :D ).

I'm sorry to place this post in the wrong forum, but I came across this 128MB RAM mod and found it highly interesting!

Can somebody give me a hint, what to pay attention for?
Here you can see inside the router, if this helps. And here is the backside of the board (where the RAM is soldered). Here are the tech. specs of the RAM chip.

I'll appreciate any advise! :)

Cheers,
tenho

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tenho

Hi folks,

can you imagine, that this RAM mod could also work for other routers. I have one Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with only 16MB of RAM, so it would be great applying this RAM mod to my router too. (Even though I was successfully been able to make the "SD mod" on my router and now it's possible to SWAP ON some space on the installed SD card which is limited only by the free SD card space, but you can figure out, that this is not the everfastest RAM upgrade possible :D ).

I'm sorry to place this post in the wrong forum, but I came across this 128MB RAM mod and found it highly interesting!

Can somebody give me a hint, what to pay attention for?
Here you can see inside the router, if this helps. And here is the backside of the board (where the RAM is soldered). Here are the tech. specs of the RAM chip.

I'll appreciate any advise! :)

Cheers,
tenho

---

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtop...ight=hpg54+ram

R.