128MB 5.0V EDO DIMM Repair?

[macuserman]

Has anyone ever repaired memory chips?

I have two 128mb sticks that both exhibit problems one will boot and then throw a memory error the other prevents the machine from booting entirely. And before anyone asks if they are even compatible, they are I had several of these and all were identical and these were the only two that didn't work.

The IC's on them for the memory are good sized and I wondered if it wouldn't be possible to just swap them out for new ones and repair the memory? Normally I wouldn't care but the 128mb sticks are so rare it seems shameful to pitch them. The chip number on them is Samsung K4E6604120-JC60 which I'm sure doesn't exist anymore but is it possible I might be able to find some new old stock chips, or perhaps an equivalent replacement part? I'm assuming there is nothing special about the chips and that swapping them would be possible, but I've never looked into it before. Is this a fools errand?


Thanks!

 

[trag]

It should be doable. The trick is identifying compatible memory chips with which to replace the old ones. Also, keep in mind that the memory chips might all be good and the buffer chip (part number contains 244 or 2244) could be the bad part.

Is K4E6604120-JC60 the part number for the whole DIMM, or the number printed on each chip? If the latter, hunt up a datasheet for it and that will tell you what kind of memory chip is being used.

There's some chance you might be able to replace them with memory chips from an HP D4893 or D4290 (72 pin SIMMs), but I'm not sure. It seems like the 72-pin SIMMs were built out of 4-bit wide memory chips and the 168-pin DIMMs were usually built out of 8-bit wide memory chips.

 

[macuserman]

It should be doable. The trick is identifying compatible memory chips with which to replace the old ones. Also, keep in mind that the memory chips might all be good and the buffer chip (part number contains 244 or 2244) could be the bad part.

Is K4E6604120-JC60 the part number for the whole DIMM, or the number printed on each chip? If the latter, hunt up a datasheet for it and that will tell you what kind of memory chip is being used.

There's some chance you might be able to replace them with memory chips from an HP D4893 or D4290 (72 pin SIMMs), but I'm not sure. It seems like the 72-pin SIMMs were built out of 4-bit wide memory chips and the 168-pin DIMMs were usually built out of 8-bit wide memory chips.

K4E6604120-JC60 is just the number printed on all the main chips.

You are right it does have a small chip on each side
IDT
74FCT
163244CPA
XG0049M

Sounds like that smaller chip is the buffer board you referred too.

So far I haven't been able to find any datasheets for the main chips but I am still looking.