So what about those 4-Mb SIMMs?

[Jeff Weber]

In article <5443 at brazos.Rice.edu> lindy!romeo at lindy.stanford.edu (Patrick Goebel) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 69, message 2
>
>Judging by recent postings on this bboard, 4-Mb SIMMs are available and
>come relatively cheap (i.e. approx. $500/chip or $125/Mb).  Does this mean
>I can simply replace the 8 X 1-Mb SIMMs on a SPARCstation 330 CPU board
>(for example) with 8 X 4-Mb ones?

You can replace the 1MB SIMMS on you CPU board with 4MB SIMMS, set the
jumper correctly and boot.  This gives you 32MB on the CPU board.

*** THIS ONLY WORKS W/O THE EXPANSION BOARD INSTALLED! *****

Clearance should be OK because the CPU board is double wide anyway because
of the way the frame buffer goes on.

>Our Sun sales rep says that Sun's 4-Mb chips will be physically taller
>than the 1-Mb version and might therefore only fit on a memory expansion
>board and not on the CPU board.  Is this true of all (reputable) 4-Mb
>SIMMs on the market?

All the normal big vendors of SIMMS are not in the market yet.  We'll just
have to wait and see.

>In addition, our sales rep claims that Sun's 4-Mb SIMM upgrade will
>require a PROM swap as well.  Can anyone verify this and elaborate if
>true?

In order to get the 32MB on the CPU board (w/4MBSIMMS) to like the
expansion memory board there is a follow on release of the boot ROM.  It
should be out anytime now but I don't think its out now. 

>I'd kill for answers to these questions, but I'd settled for a few
>responses.  Many thanks in advance!