I got myself an HX20 that seems to be a late model (newest chips are dated early '93 which seems pretty insane), and instead of the usual 8 RAM chips it has one single 32k Sony chip on a board that looks very original with similar markings to the mainboard in the externally accessible compartment, none of the other RAM footprints are populated, and there's a pretty involved set of bodge wires including a chip that are very professionally installed... looks like a late cost saving/replacement for harder to find chips.
Can't find anything similar around, has anyone ever seen this? BASIC reports the normal amount of free RAM for the stock 16K, I tried the initialization methods for the 3rd party 32K mods I found but still only 16K, just throwing this before I try to actually dig into how the mod has been done and whether accessing all 32K was even intended of it that's just what chip was most convenient to use as a replacement...
Besides the RAM situation that seems like a factory thing the unit was modded to remove the battery and replace it with a 5.5F supercap, and has an expansion module that instead of containing a standard memory/display interface has a completely custom board to interface to some industrial equipment along with an EPROM in the expansion socket with some software to use it (dated '94-95), from my research it looks like this was used as a data logger for medical instrumentation for... qualifying suppositories.
Seems rather insane to make a custom board and mods for what would have been a >12 year old machine at the point of the software date, maybe the product was older and had been designed around this or this obsolete machine by that time was a cheap way to just get the "receipt print" they were after instead of a full-blown PC with a DAQ card? So weird...
Can't find anything similar around, has anyone ever seen this? BASIC reports the normal amount of free RAM for the stock 16K, I tried the initialization methods for the 3rd party 32K mods I found but still only 16K, just throwing this before I try to actually dig into how the mod has been done and whether accessing all 32K was even intended of it that's just what chip was most convenient to use as a replacement...
Besides the RAM situation that seems like a factory thing the unit was modded to remove the battery and replace it with a 5.5F supercap, and has an expansion module that instead of containing a standard memory/display interface has a completely custom board to interface to some industrial equipment along with an EPROM in the expansion socket with some software to use it (dated '94-95), from my research it looks like this was used as a data logger for medical instrumentation for... qualifying suppositories.
Seems rather insane to make a custom board and mods for what would have been a >12 year old machine at the point of the software date, maybe the product was older and had been designed around this or this obsolete machine by that time was a cheap way to just get the "receipt print" they were after instead of a full-blown PC with a DAQ card? So weird...
