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First post, by vmr_

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Looking to upgrade a bit a nice Siemens Nixdorf PCD 4ND laptop with 4 MB RAM, 486 DX4 100MHz.

Any custom RAM modules available for these laptops?

I found several photos of the standard RAM expansions from Siemens - attached here for reference.

Also, are the RAM expansion cards the same for 4ND models (these seem to be mostly if not all 486 CPU based laptops) and 5ND (with Pentium CPUs)?

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IBM XT 5160 | 286 | 386 | 486 | S4 SI5PI AIO & S4 Batman + P60 SX828
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Reply 1 of 7, by dominusprog

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You have to look for it on eBay.

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A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Aztech Pro16 II-3D PnP ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 2 of 7, by vmr_

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dominusprog wrote on 2023-08-22, 15:51:

You have to look for it on eBay.

already have the ebay alert set 😀

was wondering if anyone managed to craft any custom RAM module as replacement

Retro builds & sandbox
IBM XT 5160 | 286 | 386 | 486 | S4 SI5PI AIO & S4 Batman + P60 SX828
S8 & PPro 200 | SS7 FW 5VGF & Asus P5A & AOpen AX59PRO K6-III+ 550MHz
Asus K7M Athlon 1Ghz GDF | Abit SH6 Pentium III 1GHz SL4KL...

Reply 4 of 7, by Thermalwrong

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I think that Siemens may have been using Panasonic as the OEM for these, the RAM card you've shown in it possibly corroborates this since they look similar to the Panasonic RAM cards, assuming the pin configuration is the same.

If so then those are half-length JEIDA standard (88 pin) memory cards - take a look at the picture on this page for an example: http://www.snarkdreams.com/personal/tinker/index.html
JEIDA cards have 2 diagonally offet rows, compared to PCMCIA where the rows are in-line.

My Panasonic CF-41 uses the same half-length DRAM cards like your picture and I can upgrade the RAM on it by installing a regular length JEIDA memory card, but it sticks out. Nice to bump it up from the stock 8MB though.

16MB is loads for this type of system. It might already be maxed out at 20MB with 4MB integrated and 16MB card.

Reply 5 of 7, by vmr_

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-22, 17:49:

I think that Siemens may have been using Panasonic as the OEM for these, the RAM card you've shown in it possibly corroborates this since they look similar to the Panasonic RAM cards, assuming the pin configuration is the same.

This sounds good, will look now for a suitable 8MB or 16MB Panasonic RAM card as plan B - at least to try it and see if it is a viable option.

As for using a JEIDA card - think Siemens 4ND and 5ND has limited space for RAM card and will not allow for a JEIDA card - as it has no front slot like Panasonic laptops you mentioned, but a bottom slot allowing only half-size cards. Might worth considering as plan C 😀

Last edited by vmr_ on 2023-08-23, 11:35. Edited 1 time in total.

Retro builds & sandbox
IBM XT 5160 | 286 | 386 | 486 | S4 SI5PI AIO & S4 Batman + P60 SX828
S8 & PPro 200 | SS7 FW 5VGF & Asus P5A & AOpen AX59PRO K6-III+ 550MHz
Asus K7M Athlon 1Ghz GDF | Abit SH6 Pentium III 1GHz SL4KL...

Reply 6 of 7, by vmr_

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@MAZter - thanks, indeed no trace of these 🙁

Retro builds & sandbox
IBM XT 5160 | 286 | 386 | 486 | S4 SI5PI AIO & S4 Batman + P60 SX828
S8 & PPro 200 | SS7 FW 5VGF & Asus P5A & AOpen AX59PRO K6-III+ 550MHz
Asus K7M Athlon 1Ghz GDF | Abit SH6 Pentium III 1GHz SL4KL...

Reply 7 of 7, by Thermalwrong

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vmr_ wrote on 2023-08-23, 11:18:
Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-22, 17:49:

I think that Siemens may have been using Panasonic as the OEM for these, the RAM card you've shown in it possibly corroborates this since they look similar to the Panasonic RAM cards, assuming the pin configuration is the same.

This sounds good, will look now for a suitable 8MB or 16MB Panasonic RAM card as plan B - at least to try it and see if it is a viable option.

As for using a JEIDA card - think Siemens 4ND and 5ND has limited space for RAM card and will not allow for a JEIDA card - as it has no front slot like Panasonic laptops you mentioned, but a bottom slot allowing only half-size cards. Might worth considering as plan C 😀

Here's the part codes from the CF-41 manual:

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Do check that the pins are diagonal though, if they're parallel or just a single row then it's not the same as JEIDA / panasonic's cards and the part codes in the previous posts are the only ones that would work.