coco rev F 32k piggyback mod

[rodent69]

Anyone familiar with a 32k piggyback mod on a rev f coco board? I have a coco 1 with that and was going to install 64k into it. Anything I should know beyond desoldering the obvious wires?

[rodent69]

I removed it and installed 64k and all seems good. That can't be a common mod, so much effort went into that compared to upgrading to 64k. The chips are all soldered together.

[jhd]

 

I thought that the piggyback mod was limited to the earlier motherboard revisions that were more difficult to upgrade.

 

I had my 16K Coco upgraded to a full 64K in November 1984. Buddy did it on the counter in front of me; he replaced the 8(?) RAM chips and, I think, clipped some capacitors. The whole process only took a few minutes.

 

I cannot imagine going to all of the trouble to solder bodge wires and chip legs for an upgrade that actually provided less memory. 

[MrDave]

Some coco1's are easier to upgrade than others... coco2 and 3 much easier..don't forget to upgrade your roms as early coco roms won't access the 64k.. 

32k was a thing back in the early coco days as there were some sketchy 64k ram chips available that might only work in 32k.. also the coco was divided as the first 32k ram the second half ram and registers..

There is a small program to type in basic that will copy the rom to ram and run full 64k ram mode

[JamesD]

I think it was cheaper to piggyback chips if your machine came with 32K.