Hello all

I'm new to open-wrt, but have some electronic experience both repairing and modding various stuff.

I'm now tinkering with upgrading the memory of my homeautomation controller, called a Veralite from Micasaverde.

The VeraLite is a stripped down version of the Vera3 from the same company. My box has 64MB of RAM and the bigger Vera3 has 128MB of ram.

The two boxes are both having an RT3662F chip, and running Open-wrt, so I'm guessing that the firmware for the two are identical.

My VeraLite has a NT5TU32M16DG-AC chip, and after looking thru the datasheets I've ordered an NT5TU64M16GG-AC
chip to upgrader it with.

So here comes what I hope someone can explain, or maybe give me some pointer to:

I'm wondering, say the board has all the needed traces, and I get the chip soldered in, what is needed open-wrt or bootcode wise to utilize the extra 64MB's?? Will this be automatically configured as on a computer, or will I need to configure something else.

I've been reading of MTD's but don't think they apply to this kind of upgrade....

If I can provide any more information to enlighten any of you, please tell me, as I would really like to give this a try.

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Tommy

(Last edited by eritom on 24 Mar 2014, 19:26)

Memory size is usually autodetected by linux.

Hello MBS

Thanks for the reply, just what I was hoping for.

Regards
Tommy

Hello again

I've been reading abit on memory upgrades.

Now I wonder, do I have to do any changes within UBOOT to accomodate for more memory?

I get the impression that UBOOT tells Linux how much memory will be available, is this correct?

Can it be done by setting variables or the likes, or do I have to compile and flash new UBOOT?

Sorry for asking maybe stupid questions here, but this is my first attempt to do something like this.

Thanks
Tommy

From what I know, linux probes RAM size on its own. A modified bootloader is only in some cases necessary, when doing a flash mod.

Hello MBS

Thanks for the answer again.

I will report back when my chips arrive.

Regards
Tommy

(Last edited by eritom on 27 Mar 2014, 22:19)

Hello

I received my chips and removed then soldered in a new chip, twice the size.

The board booted ok, but still reports 64Mbytes of RAM.

So it seems my BGA soldering went ok, but the board does not recognise the extra memory.

The board had the pin that is NC on the smaller chip laid out, so I guess it is connected to the RT3662F SOC

Does anyone have any ideas/pointers to eg. if there is something more that needs to be done, either hardware wise to enable the processor to use the extra address line needed for it to utilise the men, or maybe some boot loader stuff?

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Regards
Tommy

I'm almost sure you need to update your Uboot bootloader to detect the extra RAM. Ask for the vendor of this hardware for the Uboot sourcecode. The modification usually are one ore two lines in the sourcecode, don't ask me which lines, I never made a modded Uboot.

Other people made this mod in other ramips boards, but sadly they never make documentation about it. Maybe someone else can help you.

Another option is to flash the bootloader from the Vera3 to your Veralite.

Be aware replacing the bootloader may brick your board. You need alternative recovery options like a flash programmer or a working JTAG programmer. If your board uses an SPI flash chip then it's very easy to flash it, there are plenty of programmers for these flash memory chips.

Regards.