Some Questions About The Hardware....


input_cords

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Apr 8, 2010
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I was wondering, since it has DDR-333 SDRAM, would it be possible to upgrade the RAM, or is it locked onto the motherboard?

Also, how fast could I reliably overclock a Pandora? 800MHz?
 
First question: It's soldered on (PoP), so no upgrading.
Second question: Nobody knows for sure. It'll depend on the particular chip.
 
CokeCanNinja, read this. If memory serves, this is how it's soldered.

Basically, you would need more than "leet desoldering skills". ;) Not only that, but it is my understanding that you would also need some very expensive equipment, too.
 
Have a look at this pic: http://www.rspace.eu/pandora/

note where it says OMAP/NAND/RAM.

When Mali says it's "It's soldered on" he doesn't mean that it's put together as part of the board assembly. It's all in that little black package with the Arm Cortex processor + DSP + SGX at the bottom and the RAM and NAND packed on top. It would be easier (that's not to say it's a reasonable thing to do) to remove the entire OMAP package and replace it with a higher specced one.
 
If anyone is interested in attempting a BGA replacement it's not TOO hard, provided you're already familiar with soldering using a bottom-heater/hot air wand setup.

It's just a matter of the equipment needed, you would have to have an oven (for preheating), an xray machine (to check alignment of the part and the pads on the PCB), a hot air soldering setup, and a high quality soldering iron with a tip suitable for doing SMT work all in one place.

I'm very experienced with surface mount soldering and do a large majority of it with hot air. I do a lot of work on QFNs (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QFN ) and other such leadless ("pin"-less) parts, but have only attempted BGA replacements a dozen or so times in the past 5 years. About half were successful reworks, with the majority of the failed ones being from excess heat and not bad soldering.

First you would preheat the board before placing it on the bottom-heater and using the hot air wand to remove the old BGA using water soluble flux. Then you would use the solder wick to carefully remove any leftover solder from the pads. Next you would want to clean the board sparkly clean using a jet of warm water, then blast it with pressurized air to get the water off before putting it back in the oven to dry completely.

After the board is completely dry and cooled back down you would use water soluble tacky flux to stick the replacement BGA to the board and hold it in place once you align it. Now would be time to xray the board and see how well you aligned the solder balls on the bottom of the BGA with the solder pads on the PCB. Make adjustments as necessary and xray again until the alignment is spot on.

Now you'd have to take the board out of the xray machine and very very very very carefully place it in the oven to preheat again. Once the board is hot the tacky flux gets liquid and looses its stickyness so now you have to be really really really really REALLY careful while you carry the board from the oven back to your bottom-heater. Then all you have to do is give it a gentle blast of hot air from straight above as to not move the chip with the wind and when you see the chip sink down into place you're done. The surface tension of the liquid solder will pull it into perfect alignment.

Now you'd have to clean the board with a jet of warm water like before but this time you'd have to get under the BGA and get all the flux out from under there. After baking the board in the oven one last time to dry it you'd have yourself a replaced BGA.

The problem with the pandora is that it has a package-on-package type design, meaning you've got a BGA with another BGA soldered on top of it... yikes! I don't even think I would attempt that =D
 
I've no experience with it myself but it's doable as mitosis has stated, theres tons of vids on the tube about reballing to show whats needed and various methods of going about it. I'm sure someone with the skills to do it will offer their services to those willing to pay the price.

That is of course if we ever do see the OP ship...
 
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