help with identifying this RAM

[rukka]

Hello Everyone!

I'm wondering if anyone could help me with identifying this piece of hardware. It looks like a RAM, but the shape is different and the chips are odd-placed. I have a few laptops for testing with various RAM slots, a Toshiba Satellite Pro 480CDT recognized it as 128MB RAM but others from approximately the same era did not. It is not DDR nor SD format it does not fit in neither of these slots and even if they would fit there is not enough place for it in the housing (as you can see it is ~150-200X longer than a normal laptop RAM). So, what can it be? It is for laptop computers, or for other hardwer? (printers? scanners?) Why the odd shape? Thanks!

 

[mR_Slug]

It might just be upgrade RAM, that's in a logical arrangement that's only supported by a few systems of that era. 128MB in Pentium-era systems is quite a lot. It is tall for the form factor, but if there's space in a particular popular laptop, it may have been worth manufacturing. For example, Kingston made all sorts of weird RAM cards for Compaq's and the like. I don't know of a double-height standard for laptops. I think there was a standard for double-height 168-pin DIMMs.

 

[luckybob]

Yea, that is just laptop ram. EVERY SINGLE LAPTOP used their own special memory cards for the longest time. It wasn't until the P3 era that the SO-dimm really became standard.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

It's a 128 MB 144 pin SODIMM. This would normally mean SDRAM, but the memory chips are EDO DRAM. So it's definitely a proprietary module from something.

 

[Timo W.]

Hint: it even says 128 MB EDO, so yes, that's what it is.

EVERY SINGLE LAPTOP used their own special memory cards for the longest time. It wasn't until the P3 era that the SO-dimm really became standard.

That's just plain wrong. I'm collecting laptop memory modules for years and most share the same modules. Companies like Apple, Toshiba, and some others did there own sh*t, but most were standard - many even used ordinary 30-pin SIMM modules.

 

[rukka]

Hi, thanks for the help everyone! A couple of days ago a guy told me that this is a RAM for 286/386/486 Personal Computers with ISA bus, and I was really surprised that it is actually working in a laptop. Sadly I have no way to try it out in PCs. But it made little sense to me, as the best of my knowledge you can not use PC ram in laptops, and mine seems to be fuly functional in a laptop.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

RAM is RAM, just because the computer form factor changes, doesn't mean the memory technology also needs to change.

EDO is a type of memory and was used on desktops, laptops and servers, as well as other things that required volatile memory.

While this specific module could theoretically work in a desktop PC, the number of desktop machines with SO-DIMM memory slots is extremely small. SO-DIMM slots are normally reserved for embedded use or small form factor machines like POS, ITX, routers, etc.

There are SO-DIMM to DIMM adapters available on the market, which allow you to use SO-DIMMs in desktop PCs, but finding one for memory that old is going to be a challenge.