http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/NANDFlash/SLC_LargeBlock/32Gbit/K9NBG08U5M/K9NBG08U5M.htm
is the correct link for the 4GB/32Gbit chip
the one linked from the article is wrong (2GB/16Gbit), and not even the one shown in the pictures.

as long as the pads are all wired, 8GB is quite possible. though if they are only wired for 2GB chips then this will result in a 4GB ipod with another 4GB nonaccessable.

also the chips do look a little thick for TSOPs though.

Posted at 5:54 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by DCGrendel

it could be done, but I doubt it could with just the infomation provided on that page. See http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/FattenYourSlug
for an example of piggybacking ram.

Posted at 6:14 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by splat1

I guess the questions begs to be asked then:

Why report this at all?

Posted at 7:37 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by strider_mt2k

so if you did do this and you ended up with a 4gb nano with 4gb nonaccessable wouldnt you be able to mod/hack the nanos firmwere to accept the new 4gb?.

also he says that “8. Do a factory reset” now if this alows the nano to acces the new 4gb to make the total 8gb i dont know…

if it works that would be very cool and i for one would buy a nano to try it out on…
luke

Posted at 7:53 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by luke

his pics don’t quite match…
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0908/nano.htm

Posted at 8:42 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by twitchy

I emailed the guy with requests for pictures of a working 8gb nano and a bit more info. We’ll see what shows up….

My hunch is that this is a hoax/incorrect info….but we’ll see

Posted at 10:14 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by andrew

A capacity screen shot would have been nice. I would be very surprised if the nano firmware didn’t limit itself to the capacity it ships with. Although Apple generally doesn’t seem too worried about what hackers do to iPods.

Based on a few nano teardown pictures the pictures in the MultiArcade article do seem feasible to me.

It does look like Apple uses flash parts in various combinations. It seems not all 2G nanos are created using the same parts. The Japanese teardown shows the 2GB Samsung K9WAG08U1M on the daughter card. This article:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26485

shows two 1GB Samsung K9W8G08U1M on the base board. I have also seen a Toshiba part on the base board but I can not find the picture at the moment. If my memory is correct the Toshiba part was a 2GB part.

The MultiArcade 8G ipod nano article shows a 4GB Samsung K9NBG08U5M on the base board. As noted previously, the Samsung link in the MultiArcarde article is incorrect. It contains a link to the 2GB Samsung K9WAG08U1M and not to the 4GB K9NBG08U5M shown in the pictures.

Posted at 10:27 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by mike

Stacking chips is an old school method of increasing storage. The important thing that’s missing is an additional CS (chip select) wired to the flash. Just stacking 2 flash chips is asking for trouble, since flash chips have a fairly long write cycle and use and acknowledge mechanism to notify the host of write completion. Additionally, as flash chips age, the write time increases, requiring additional write cycles to overwrite a given page of data, sort of like tracing over an outline to make it darker.

Posted at 11:21 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by perry

Stacking chips does wrk for increased storage (the GP32 can be upgraded this way). what i’m not sure of is whether the nano would then need a firmware update/hack to allow it to see the full 8gb. If it’s already set up to be expandable, then it might work. If not, the firmware needs to be hacked.

Posted at 11:52 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by Edz

Why the hell is this on the frount page.

Posted at 11:55 am on Jan 12th, 2006 by JEsse

hey jesse,

if you dont like it, submit something better.

kthxbye

Posted at 12:29 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by grayskies

Dearth means a lack of, I think you mean abundance.

Posted at 12:31 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by dave

Well, wait… if Apple was shipping 2Gb Nanos with 2 x 1Gb chips, then switched to 1 x 2Gb chips, it makes perfect sense that you can add another 4Gb chip to the 4Gb and make 8 gig.

It makes sense for the following reasons:
1. A heck of a lot more flexibility in manufacturing… lets you start with 2 x 1 gig chips (which are cheaper initially) and as production ramps up, lets you switch to a single 2Gb chip.
2. Allows for planned expansion… nothing simpler than building an upgrade into a product. Apple wants to sell an 8 gig Nano? No problem! Just add a second chip. Just from the looks of things, this is entirely possible.

I live in Queens, I’m going to contact him and see if I can deliver it to him in person.

I’ll then post a screenshot of the capacity, and if it’s legit, we’ll all know he’s for real.

Posted at 12:44 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Richard

hmm, i don’t know a lot about the ipod, but if it’s using a 32 bits CPU, then would it cause some problems to adress more than 4 gigs?

Posted at 1:02 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Francis

thanks Dave, I know I shouldn’t write copy at 4AM

Fabienne and I spent most of the morning trying to dig up pictures of the 4G being disassembled to determine if Apple had changed there production and wasn’t using the daughter card anymore.
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/01/12/scam-or-not-8gb-ipod-nano-upgrade

I did see that inquirer article about the 2G with the photo of the Samsung chips, but Fabienne split hers open on the spot and confirmed that it was using chips from Toshiba.

Posted at 1:17 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Eliot Phillips

That’s not a hack, that’s major surgery!

Posted at 1:27 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Bigg_al

francis, no, it wouldn’t. You’re thinking of RAM limitations of x86 machines. This is solid-state storage, which doesn’t have that limitation

Posted at 2:11 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by josh

I say hoax - how do you guarantee that the iPods firmware will detect the extra RAM? What about file systems? There was no mention of it. I’ve had load of trouble taking 4th gen drives and putting them in 3rd Gen Ipods, let alone just slapping a chip on a nano’s board.

Even if it’s real, it’s ballsy and dangerous to mod your nano in such a manner. It’d be really easy to brick a perfectly good 4GB. My thought is that it’d be simpler to buy a good one and one with a broken screen from eBay, replace the screen, and tape them together. There’s your 8BG DS super nano…

Posted at 2:31 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by tom Finley

josh: It is a limitation of 32-bit addressing (DRAM and flash are both solid-state storage btw). However, if instead of addressing individual bytes you address words (2/4/8/etc bytes at a time), then you could go beyond 4GB. Since the flash memory is used for bulk storage, this seems reasonable.

Posted at 2:39 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Paul

Ok guys here it is. This is what you’ve been waiting for. I’m in no way affiliated with the guy that wrote the original post, but i’ve come up with a way to do it. Its actually quite simple… all you do it take two 2 gig flash chips and scotch tape them to the back of the ipod. You have to use scotch tape as its mystical powers create a sexual tension between the chips and the device. They then mate and there you go, an 8 gig ipod nano. I’m actually experimenting with mating a nano and a 2 platter seagate 400 gig disk but so far no luck… i’ll keep you updated

Posted at 3:29 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Craig

http://ipod.hackaday.com/entry/1234000547035805/

In that case there must be some significant sexual tension in this ipod, you sarcastic bastard.

Posted at 4:00 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by BillytheImpaler

Re: Stacking, etc.
The images look like the Flash was stacked, however the instructions say to solder the flash to the open slot. The part numbers are for 50ns 4G NAND flash. So it would seem from the pictures that there are 4×4G for a total of 16G? Confusing!
And why would he unsolder the chip stack from the right and re-solder it on the left, then solder the new stack where the old one was?
I am so confused!

Posted at 4:29 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Kaphine

Okay, there are many inconsistencies in this story:

- All three 4GB Nanos that I have opened to date use a daughter board that has two 2GB flash chips, one on each side of the board.

- The part number he LINKS to is the same part number that is in all of my 4GB Nanos. It is a 2GB part.

- The part number seen in his pictures is a 4GB part number, which can be seen here: http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/common/partnumbersearch.aspx?partnum=K9NBG08U5M&cd1=&x=0&y=0

- If what he claims is true, then that board that he has pictured has FOUR 4GB chips, meaning 16GB of available flash! Don’t you think he would have bragged about this if it were possible?

Furthermore:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~omikron/Shenanigans/MultiArcade/

Those are the pictures that I took just moments ago from my own 4GB Nano. Things don’t quite match up to his story, do they?

Posted at 4:33 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Omikron

What’s this about stacking? He doesn’t mention stacking - just removing the chip from the broken nano and installing it in the open ’socket’ (for lack of a better term). The photos clearly show an area on the PCB for another chip.

I have no idea if it works, but the instructions seemed straightforward to me.

Posted at 5:07 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Rick

if it may not be a hack, if you dont have enough proof to tell, if you arent sure that its even a real hack…then why post this crap. didnt know this site was a big discussion forum….”here this might not be a real hack, tell us if you think it is” bs

Posted at 6:19 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Hybrid

The chips aren’t stacked… that’s how thick 4 gig flash are. Lots of manufacturers allow for additional flash chips for flexibility so they, for example, can use 2 2 gig chips if the supply of 4 gig chips runs short. I’ve cracked open CF cards that have 3 unpopulated spaces for flash chips.

I’ve done similar transplants on the CVS cams (for different reasons) - he’s provided all of the information required and I don’t see any inconsistancies. Also, I’d expect that the ipods’ firmware is sophisticated enough to autodetect the amount of flash installed.

Posted at 8:34 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by billw

The chips can be had from Samsung in stacked config with chip select properly configured.

Here’s the link to the datasheet (.PDF) for the K9WAG08U1M
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/NANDFlash/SLC_LargeBlock/16Gbit/K9WAG08U1M/ds_k9xxg08uxm_rev10.pdf

Not an endorsement of this “hack”, which indeed has a cat-candy stench to it.

I wouldn’t send this guy a dime, let alone a Nano and $$$

Posted at 8:52 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by greybeard

When you compare the picture on that site to the pictures posted eveywhere else of the nano you can tell that it hasto be fake. The 4gig nano has a daughter board with 2 2gig chips. One on the front, one on the back. That site is showing a daughter board with 1 4gig chip on the front with an empty slot next to it. I don’t see how it’s real. It looks like a get rich fast sceem.

Posted at 9:57 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Mooga

Well you know, it seems like this could work out to be a good scam for him; he tells people that they can double their storage by buying a broken 4gb nano, or by buying a chip from him. He removes the chips from a bunch of nanos, sells them as “broken” and sells the chips seperately. He wins twice (3 if you count installation). This theory falls flat however, when you notice he’s not selling any broken nanos. In fact, nobody is.
Worse yet, he could get you to send him your ipod nano and then simply sell it on ebay, like he’s been doing.

That said, I think there is a good possibility that it isn’t a scam. There definitely needs to be more investigation though, as opposed to people whining about the 4gb chips looking like 2 2gb chips stacked on top of each other. Why can’t anyone contact this person?

Posted at 10:19 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by chris

not endorsing at all, but his pictures don’t seem to mention the stacking because they seem to be already stacked. I think (if real) that his has “stacked” memory already and he adds a “stacked” memory from another nano. I’m not horribly excited about the hack, but if real it shows that Apple is ready for an upgrade when the time comes.

Posted at 11:06 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by Michael the Great

I’m guessing the daughter board was probably a later addition to make it easier on apple to replace under-warranty memory. All they’d need to do is pop it open, replace the old daughterboard with a new one, snap it closed and ship it back. It’d definitely make sense, since Apple would probably not want to replace the entire device if just that one component fails. (and we know how apple has a track record with components failing…nano screen…original click-wheels failing…batteries failing…. etc)

Posted at 11:48 pm on Jan 12th, 2006 by DJDole

upon looking at the data sheet for the recomended chips, you will notice that they /come already stacked/ from the manufactuer, not saying this will work, but it looks as though this is just an issue if the firmware wil support the extra storage.

my prediction is that apple will eventually re-release the nano in a higher capacity form, and at the same time give current users the option to send in their old nanos for a memory upgrade. (just changing out the daughter board)

it’s only beena day, lets give this guy a chance to put some pictures up, I am not touching my nano till I see somone else do it.

Posted at 12:14 am on Jan 13th, 2006 by pretorious

I was under the impression that the 4 gig nanos came with ONE 4 gig chip on the motherboard, while the 2 gig units shipped with TWO 1 gig chips on a daughtercard. So his chips, assuming they are the factory-double-stacked chips mentioned above could be Legit.

Posted at 12:21 am on Jan 13th, 2006 by smilr

Elliot,
Someone should call and ask. You probably already know this, but a search at whois.net pulls up the telephone number, address and e-mail for the website (multiarcade.com) in Boca Raton, FL. Or don’t — hope this is helpful.

Posted at 1:45 am on Jan 13th, 2006 by lordbyron

Ok guys, this is one big scam: if you investigate a little further and have a look at his ebay feeback page: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=multiarcade-com
Check out the people who gave the positive feedback. It’s just one big fake network of ‘users’ who give eachother good ratings. Some of them gave thousands of good feedbacks to other users and 0 negative feedbacks.

Don’t fall for this one, it’s a bit too obvious…

Posted at 3:36 am on Jan 13th, 2006 by abatcher

Anyone else notice the auction has been removed?

Posted at 1:03 pm on Jan 13th, 2006 by mike

Look at the pictures in #22 and the pictures on his site. Notice that you are looking at the same things minus the slot for the daughterboard. This could be faked by using photoshop etc, but also notice that the two mountig holes are missing from the udate pictures. This is obviuosly a different model iPod or earlier version.

I personally believe that this is an early version of the model that did not use the daughterboard. and a single flsh. Apple was in negotiations with Smasung for a long time and then had to wait for procustion to ramp.

Look again at the pictures; if the daughter socket and mounting holes were removed from a curent model iPod, as shown ion #22, it would look identical to the one in the picture. Apple even left the pads on the board when they added the socket.

Plausable :Myth not busted.

Posted at 1:26 pm on Jan 13th, 2006 by noone21000

man… this article cracks me up. good one guys… should have saved it for april 1st though…

Posted at 2:12 pm on Jan 13th, 2006 by Yorgle

do you guys beleive if this is true….it will also work on a SHUFFLE????

Posted at 2:57 pm on Jan 13th, 2006 by Erik Baca

Ok, so from being in the electronics industry at a level sufficient to debunk this, let me state a few things:

1. double stacking chips is done in some cases to increase density without increasing real estate, HOWEVER, there is need for an “interposer” that handles the chipselect for the top chip separate from bottom chip, because as stated in #8 above, just stacking the two won’t get you to 8GB. So on that alone, I throw the bullshit flag.

2. assuming this did work, you just set yourself up for a headache in case you even drop your Nano from a very short height, because of the nature of ChipQuik (what he uses to remove the chips). This stuff is an alloy that is physically weak, and created that way on purpose so that you can desolder a part without much headache. It works by you “resoldering” the part with the ChipQuik alloy, and then using a dental pick to pop the part of the board. However, if not cleaned off said part or PCB properly, then you contaminate any of your new solder joints, and weaken them as well. This leads to early failure after a shock or two. Nevermind thermal cycling of being in your pocket, then on the desk. In his steps, it mentions nothing about removing the ChipQuik from the parts or the PCB. So while this is not a “bullshit flag” worthy item, it does lead me to think this guy doesn’t know his head from his ass in using a soldering iron (that could be quite painful! ).

3. as most people well know, assemblies and such are always reused if possible. Same goes for software, which is why it would not surprise me to see it recognize an 8GB flash section, because no doubt Apple is smart enough to make the software forward looking for something as simple as a change of storage space size. However, as stated in point #1, without the extra chip select lines coming from the processor, the extra flash chips will never be seen. End of story.

To answer #14, #17 and #18, no, 32 bit processor has nothing to do with this, only because it’s code storage (where it’s going to be issuing code fetches to) is not the same as the song storage. If it were the same, then it would indeed only be able to see the 2^32 (~4GB) limit. The difference comes in how they hooked up the address lines of the flash devices. Usually a storage section like this will be addressed completely differently than that which would be hooked up to the address/data lines of the processor. For example, it is very possible to address any sector of a hard drive (which is bigger than 8GB) with even an 8 bit microcontroller. This is possible because the addressing is different. Look at http://www.pjrc.com/tech/mp3/ for one example of hooking up an 8051 to a hard drive.

Posted at 7:36 pm on Jan 13th, 2006 by Todd

again, /the chips come double stacked already from the manufactuer/ this maybe-hack in no way involves sodering one chip on top of another.

considering we once had a hack that involved making two ipod photos into a stergraph, somone out there has to have the financial means to at least try this. I know from experence that just because somthing shouldn’t work does not mean that it will not work.

still sounds fishy, but possible. consider maybe that he made purposly vauge instructions so non technical people would just give him the $ to do it.

whatever, I am happy with my 40Gb nomad xtra

Posted at 9:40 pm on Jan 13th, 2006 by pretorious

“Broken Nano with 4gb chip which I remove”

He is talking about removing a 4GB chip from the nano, seeing a normal nano has 2 2GB chips this is kinda hard…

Posted at 7:30 am on Jan 14th, 2006 by mycroes

hmm you have two pads on all of the different variations of ipod nano boards. depending on what chips are avail and to what prices, apple this way can put var. combinations of NAND flashs on it.

if later ipods have “denser” chips, the 4gb version still uses only one chip, leaving the other pad open.

if you read on the chip its a 2GB, that doesnt mean it IS - in contracts of this size, sometimes you dont label (in this case) stacked chips with the new number, since they are already sold bevor the leave samsung.

all that doesnt mean the hack is working… but if the nano can adress 8gb, and if apple uses 4gbyte (stacked) samsung chips, it should

from samsung:
“An ultra high density solution having two 8Gb stacked with two chip selects is also available in standard TSOPI package and another
ultra high density solution having two 16Gb TSOPI package stacked with four chip selects is also available in TSOPI-DSP. “

Posted at 8:40 am on Jan 14th, 2006 by Anunnaki

I would say this is highly possible. back about 1990, I bought an LED based printer (same print engine as a laser printer, but used a row of LEDs instead of a scanning laser to illuminate the print drum.) Okidata OL400e

This printer came with 0.5MB memory, but by buying an expansion card, you could increase this to 1.5MB. The expansion card had sockets on it to plug in more memory chips, up to 3.5MB.

I was walking through the local office suplies store, and noticed they had four of these cards on their clearance table - I bought them all. Once I got home, I unsoldered the chips from three boards and plugged them into the forth. After installing the board into the printer, the printer reported the full 3.5MB of memory.

So yeah, I’d say this iPod nano upgrade is right on target.

PS The printer is running fine today…

Posted at 1:14 pm on Jan 14th, 2006 by Brett

OKAY
This hack seems really plausible to me and seeing as I

Posted at 9:49 pm on Jan 14th, 2006 by andrew

I’m just wondering, I’m seeing alot of folks say yeah or nay on this subject but has anyone actually tried it? I don’t know jack about nano’s or their capabilities but I think it would be nice if someone who has actually tried it posted the experience.

Posted at 1:11 am on Jan 15th, 2006 by Amish3006

yea, i think the one thing which strongly points towards the impossibility of this, is the fact that no one has a working version that they can post pictures of.

Posted at 3:46 pm on Jan 15th, 2006 by paul oberman

It looks to me lke he just bought a nano, opened it, ripped of the socket for the daughter board, soldered on some random flash he memory he had laying aroud over where the socket had been, soldered on more random flash memory next to it, Then took pictures to convince people to send him ther ipods(and their $$$) so he could sell them on ebay.

Posted at 6:52 pm on Jan 15th, 2006 by Alex Rueda

Check out this :

http://www.vintagecomp.com/room/mactune/special/iPodnano/iPodnano.html
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/4

Posted at 3:59 pm on Jan 16th, 2006 by iPod nano blog

Check out this :

http://www.vintagecomp.com/room/mactune/special/iPodnano/iPodnano.html
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/4

Posted at 4:07 pm on Jan 16th, 2006 by iPod nano blog

Opened a 4gb nano that was purchased 1 week after the release. Also opened a 4gb nano purchased today. On both nanos there are 2 samsung 2gb chips stacked in ONE SLOT. Other slot is totally vacant. NO DAUGHTER BOARDS FOR MEMORY AT ALL. That site looks correct. I guess Apple did this so when it comes time all they have to do is add a set of stacked chips for their 8gb nanos. Futher Discovery- There are some pins on the top memory chip which apple cut. If I remember correctly this helps address the memory flows. I think if you add memory to the vacant slot you will need to bridge these cut leads and leave cut pins at the same leads for the vacant slot. This hack is 100% totally doable but you will need to bridge some leads to make it happen which the site is not talking about. I don’t think a bios rewrite is needed but it won’t be to hard if it is as it’s *very easy* to reflash the bios of the nano. Someone should start a forum on this subject as it’s a very desirable hack to perform.

Posted at 7:24 pm on Jan 16th, 2006 by Jason kessler

Hey i dont know much about ipods but all i know is that if some one actually does it ill pay them to do mine too! Cuz i know about computers but ive always had a diff time with sodering ive F-ed so man Xbox’s But it sounds do-able but it just has to be plain tested thats the only way

Posted at 11:45 am on Jan 17th, 2006 by Ben

As for the nano’s firmware supporting the hack, I don’t see why it wouldn’t. The 2GB and 4GB nanos use the exact same firmware; it would make sense for Apple to have the firmware check the size of the memory, say, when the firmware is initially flashed (or even when it boots up) rather than hard coding the sizes directly into the firmware. While the validity of this website is certainly questionable, the hack itself does seem like a real possibility!

Posted at 10:42 pm on Jan 17th, 2006 by itsdvw

This hack seems feasible with a little skill in soldering, as jason said there would be some trick to the cut leads

Posted at 9:50 pm on Jan 18th, 2006 by juz10

A 32 Gbit(Gb) flash drive is the same as a 4 GB (GByte) flash drive.
1 byte = 8 bits
Sorry for the confusion, I and most everyone else have been ignoring capitals…

Posted at 2:28 am on Jan 19th, 2006 by itsdvw

Ah, I see… never mind, I hadn’t noticed that all capitals are removed from our posts.

4 gigabyte flash chip (capital B) = 32 gigabit (lowercase b) flash chip

1 byte = 8 bits

Posted at 2:33 am on Jan 19th, 2006 by itsdvw

Seems there are a lot of different nano’s around then. The 4G nano I have opened has a daughter board. It was sold at the Paris Expo. Upgrading it like this is not possible with that model, unless you desolder the existing connector. One thing is for sure though, the room is there.

Posted at 9:00 am on Jan 19th, 2006 by rrrichie

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/Support/Label_CodeInfo/Nand_Flash.pdf

the chip he has on his board is the 4gig chip, maybe apple changed to the single 4 gig chip vs. the 2x 2gig chips

Posted at 1:27 pm on Jan 19th, 2006 by p057

Has anyone tried it yet? Also what happened with Richard #13. Did he talk to that guy yet?

Posted at 6:20 pm on Jan 19th, 2006 by j2

I have been fixing ipods for many years now. Almost all 4gb Apple nanos I see have 2 slots with 1 slot containing 2 stacked 2gb memory chips. The other slot is empty like the picture on multiarcade.com. Almost all 4gb nanos from release to current do not have daughter boards. That chip is not a 4gb chip it’s an image of two 2gb chips stacked on each other. The other image is of four 2gb chips (8GB total), side by side with 2 stacked. K9NBG08U5M is a 2 gig samsung chip, all the other numbers on the chip don’t mean anything important other than PCAO which is the package type. Apple does not use Samsung 1gb chips and they don’t use Samsungs 4 gb chips. Apple does not use 1gb samsung on any models. However ipod does use hitachi 1gb in 2gb nanos. They only use samsung 2gb chips ONLY most of which are stacked. A very few early release 4gb nanos have daughter boards which have 2, samsung 2gb chips but they are not stacked, but these units are rare.

Posted at 8:01 pm on Jan 19th, 2006 by Steven

Look at the datasheet.

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/NANDFlash/SLC_LargeBlock/32Gbit/K9NBG08U5M/ds_k9xxg08uxm_rev10.pdf

Goto page 7 of the data sheet at the link above and you will see Part: K9NBG08USM-PCB0 which is the same as K9NBG08USM-PCA0 that is used in the nano except A is for APPLE and B is generic. If you look close at page 7 you will see that it’s 2, 2 gb chips piggybacked.

Posted at 8:28 pm on Jan 19th, 2006 by Steven

sooo besides all the…. it’s plausible, not plausible, how about someone out there with money try it already, otherwise, i’m'a start a site on trying to validate the concept and beg for donations to buy the materials ’cause i dont have the money to risk it yet… i’m sure someone else out there does

Posted at 2:02 am on Jan 20th, 2006 by Maedondias

i noticed something when fixing the configuration of my buddy’s nano, his music disappeared when he hooked it up to a mac, and for some odd reason it said he only had 268mb space left. said the total size of the chip was 1.9, after i updated the firmware and did a factory restore it started telling me that the max space was 1.7gb… so i’m guessing the firmware started tracking the chip as being a different size

Posted at 2:04 am on Jan 20th, 2006 by Maedondias

Does anyone know where I can get my hands on one of those 4GB chips? I have a 4GB nano I’d be willing to try this on. Samsung’s website says that the minimum order size is something like 2000 units…that’s about 1998 more than I need…

Posted at 10:22 am on Jan 20th, 2006 by matt

The website in mention (multiarcade)says that the 4G ipod has a single 4G Samsung K9NBG08U5M chip soldered onto the main board. This leaves space for a second chip on the main board, another 4G chip. This would mean each soldered chip has it’s own CS (chip select). The idea of soldering another chip on top will not work, each chip needs to have its own CS line !!!!!
You can’t piggy back CS lines !!!!

It doesn’t say to solder another chip ontop of another (wouldn’t work, need seperate CS for each chip)the diagram between steps 7& 8 is confusing. The question is also have apple changed the latest 4G ipod to no longer use the daughter board with 2×2G chips to make 4G, but might now ship it with 1×4G chip and no daughter board. Who has opened up a 4G ipod that might be their latest batch, eg jan 2006 shipment ?
Sorry leaving mine intact, too much other stuff to do.

Posted at 5:57 am on Jan 21st, 2006 by aussiepod

The website in mention (multiarcade)says that the 4G ipod has a single 4G Samsung K9NBG08U5M chip soldered onto the main board. This leaves space for a second chip on the main board, another 4G chip. This would mean each soldered chip has it’s own CS (chip select). The idea of soldering another chip on top will not work, each chip needs to have its own CS line !!!!!
You can’t piggy back CS lines !!!!

It doesn’t say to solder another chip ontop of another (wouldn’t work, need seperate CS for each chip)the diagram between steps 7& 8 is confusing. The question is also have apple changed the latest 4G ipod to no longer use the daughter board with 2×2G chips to make 4G, but might now ship it with 1×4G chip and no daughter board. Who has opened up a 4G ipod that might be their latest batch, eg jan 2006 shipment ?
Sorry leaving mine intact, too much other stuff to do.

Posted at 6:05 am on Jan 21st, 2006 by aussiepod

Dear aussiepod, You have no clue! The multiarcade site is not saying to piggyback anything. The site says to use the vacant slot. All the site is saying is to remove a prestacked 4gb chip (already pre-stacked by samsung as per the samsung tech sheet and you can see a picture of the factory stacked 4gb (2×2) chip from the samsung datasheet at http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/NANDFlash/SLC_LargeBlock/32Gbit/K9NBG08U5M/ds_k9xxg08uxm_rev10.pdf
on page #7). So aussiepod, take a look and you will see there is NO stacking of any chips because on nanos (with out a daughter board which is most of them) the chips are prestacked and there is a vacant spot for another prestacked 4gb chip. NO STACKING ENVOLVED!!! So your chip select (CS) theory is so silly.

Posted at 12:59 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by steen

Look at the top of page 7 of http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/NANDFlash/SLC_LargeBlock/32Gbit/K9NBG08U5M/ds_k9xxg08uxm_rev10.pdf
you will see it says: “DUAL STACKED PACKAGE” and then look at the bottom of page 7 and you will see three profile views of the chip and you will see that samsung using two 2gb chips factory “DUAL STACKED” to make a single package of 4gb.

Posted at 1:13 pm on Jan 21st, 2006 by steen

I see what you guys mean, thanks for the clarification. Looked at the data sheet, and yes, it is factory prestacked chip, with pins 9 &10 unused from the top chip (ce1,ce2) but 9& 10 used by the bottom chip, so that they can toggle between the top chip and bottom chip.

So where can one buy these chips in small quanaties, eg 1, if the firmware supports it, and the CE lines are used on the second set of solder pads when going above 4G, it should work ?

Posted at 7:28 pm on Jan 22nd, 2006 by aussiepod

Hi,

The Chipquik removal method works well, I’ve used it on a 256MB keydisk to mod it to 512MB.

One thing that I did notice is that the stacks probably have the chip select lines hard wired. This is a common method which does work but you need to wire alternate lines to GND for it to work properly (so CS1—GND CS2—CS1board on the first chip, and CS1—CS2board, CS2—GND

It might work with just pins and leaving them floating, but usually this doesent work properly unless the chip has internal pullups or pulldowns.

-A

Posted at 7:14 am on Jan 26th, 2006 by Andre

Has anyone here performed this task ?

Posted at 6:22 pm on Jan 27th, 2006 by steen

All nano’s I have opened so far have either 2 1G chips side by side or on daughterboard. Seeing the stacked chips are sold by Samsung, but they have more Select and Ready lines than the other chips, this might mean the motherboard of the nano has to be ready for this too. I wouldn’t mind soldering in an extra stack but… well, just haven’t found the right nano yet.

Posted at 7:09 pm on Jan 30th, 2006 by rrrichie

RRRICHIE…. The only IPODs that have stacked chips are the 4 gig nanos. NO 2 gig nanos have stacked chips, you are describing 2gig nanos.

Posted at 8:50 pm on Jan 31st, 2006 by steen

Here are pics of an open 4G nano (a recent one):

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~omikron/Shenanigans/MultiArcade/

Compare to the multiarcade pics and notice the lack of daughterboard connector and screw holes. The guy has to be using a 2G motherboard, so unless the 1G cips and 4G chips have the same # of connectors, he’s faking it.

Posted at 11:46 am on Feb 3rd, 2006 by Matt d

The 1gig chips and the 4 gig chips *do* have the same pinouts. Flash memory is intentionally that way so a design can be easily upgraded.

Posted at 7:25 pm on Feb 4th, 2006 by Billw

It’s totally doable.

I live in Shanghai - you can buy iPods from the factory (off the back of lorry style) in many places in Shanghai.

My Nano guy sells nano’s sans ram for 900RMB

You can add your own ram to those - they’ll do surface mounted component mounts instore for you.

So, yeah, its possible.

Posted at 6:21 am on Feb 11th, 2006 by Lawrence sheed

Lawrence Sheed.
I’ll buy them if you can get me some.
drdru82 at hotmail dot com

Posted at 2:48 am on Mar 4th, 2006 by Andy

@Lawrence Sheed:

Would be interested to purchase at least one from you, email me at paulrolton-at-yahoo-dot-co-dot-uk.

Cheers, Paul

Posted at 6:35 pm on Mar 6th, 2006 by paul

well a friend of mine just got back from china and gave me what looks to be a ipod nano 2gb (alhough only showes 1.87gb) that he bought for about

Posted at 6:07 pm on Mar 15th, 2006 by newbie

I cracked open my 4GB nano and I can confirm that it dose not have a daughter bored and it dose have two stacked 2GB chips and one empty slot… I can post pictures if necessary!

Posted at 2:43 am on Mar 23rd, 2006 by Predator

Here is the link to a zip containing the hi res images of my 4GB iPod:
http://www.andrewstrausberg.com/~proof/proof.zip (15.0 MB)

also you can look at the hi res pics separately:
http://www.andrewstrausberg.com/~proof/

Posted at 10:18 pm on Mar 23rd, 2006 by PREDATOR

Anyone find this interesting… At all… Im still trying to get my hands on another 4GB iPod, once I do ill do the hack and (dis)prove it once and for all.

Posted at 11:14 pm on Mar 29th, 2006 by PREDATOR

so has anybody done the hack i just got a 4gig and it would be nice to have an 8gig

Posted at 3:13 pm on Apr 8th, 2006 by Sittingduck

soooooo… does it work??? or not work??? i hate how people just stop sending info. and we dont even know if it works yet and if it does then i want to know because then i will do it to my 4g ipod nano…but i wont do it untill i know if it works and i really dont want to try it on my i pod unless i know thaT IT WORKS FOR sure. well any ways i really really want to know if it does work. someone please tell me.
E-mail = phillyj2121@hotmail.com
ok bye!!!=)

Posted at 1:39 pm on Apr 11th, 2006 by phillyj

where can i buy apple ipod 60gb in shanghai, and where are the factories, i want to buy direct?

thanku

Posted at 12:56 am on Apr 13th, 2006 by nayan patel

So has any one figured out if this works?? I have 2 4GB nano’s on the way and i am wondering if this will be a waste of my time. email me = tcbuffs at gmail

Posted at 1:57 am on Apr 19th, 2006 by Tony

I really want to do this hack now, more so than before, because slashdot has an article on there site with rumors of an 8gig nano in the works at apple

site: http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/04/22/137218.shtml

Posted at 5:01 pm on Apr 23rd, 2006 by PREDATOR

I really want to do this hack now, more so than before, because slashdot has an article on there site with rumors of an 8gig nano in the works at apple

site: http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/04/22/137218.shtml

Posted at 5:03 pm on Apr 23rd, 2006 by PREDATOR

Well, after so much reading about if it was a fake a not, I decided to put my hands at work and test it by myself.

The hack as described IT IS A FRAUD!!!, at least as it is describe it. Could be possible but there should be neccesary a new firmware or perhaps to place or to remove a jumper.

Keep away from it and spend your money and time in some thing more productive, or save it until apple release a proper one.

I have ruined 3 4GB ipod nano beyond repair, and as I bought them on eBay as broken screen ones, I have spend 319.52

Posted at 7:32 am on Apr 26th, 2006 by Isshou

isshou - are you familiar with ipodlinux? I ask because if you have tried it, you are probably familiar with the hp flash format tool. Google “hp usb format” and get the cached hp site, you can download from there. I was too lazy to get you the actual link. I’m guessing that you MIGHT be able to format whatever memory you have on the nano. I think you have a good chance at salvaging the hardware you have and probably get back the original 4 gigs. Who knows you might even get 8 gigs. Many people when they first try to install linux on their nano believe that they have “bricked” it, but a simple format (to fat32) with the hp format tool will set your ipod back to pretty much what it was before it was plugged into your computer for the first time. From there you can communicate with it using the iPod software.

Posted at 3:56 am on May 25th, 2006 by dexter

Hi dexter,
Thank you for your comment. I haven’t added any new entry because I thought it was not important for the main subject, that is, the 8GB upgrade. But yes, I have manage to recover 2 out of the 3 ipod nano. And yes, I am familiar with the Podzilla, I have a 6GB mini with linux installed. With the HP USB formating utility I managed to format the 4GB nano and they are working (2 of them) I sold back one of them and I gave the other one to my daughter, in the third one I got a few broken pads on the PCB therefore it will not work again.
Since I placed the previous entry I have been reading a bit about those memory chips and I have found out quiet a few interesting things. I shall come back with fresh news when I done it.

Posted at 5:18 am on May 25th, 2006 by Isshou

Hi dexter,
Thank you for your comment. I haven’t added any new entry because I thought it was not important for the main subject, that is, the 8GB upgrade. But yes, I have manage to recover 2 out of the 3 ipod nano. And yes, I am familiar with the Podzilla, I have a 6GB mini with linux installed. With the HP USB formating utility I managed to format the 4GB nano and they are working (2 of them) I sold back one of them and I gave the other one to my daughter, in the third one I got a few broken pads on the PCB therefore it will not work again.
Since I placed the previous entry I have been reading a bit about those memory chips and I have found out quiet a few interesting things. I shall come back with fresh news when I done it.

Posted at 6:46 am on May 25th, 2006 by Isshou

i was looking on ebay it would be cheaper to buy a 4Gb ipod nano logic board and use that chip then to buy a broken nano

Posted at 12:52 pm on Jul 4th, 2006 by toked323

i am pretty sure this will work cause when you look at the pictures in the link it looks like there is a sspot for another 4gb chip and in the 2gb nano it is set up the same but it has 2 1GB chips that make it 2GB so that should as well for the 4GB nano too.

Posted at 3:34 pm on Jul 4th, 2006 by Toked323

hey guys if your willing to pay 200$ theres a way to put two 8gb chips in for a total of 16gb from the company micron, they offer 8gb models stacked in one package. i checked the pins and it should work. post anything if somebody tries this. i don’t take responsibility for broken ipods. this is just for somebody to do on their own time! thanks, corey

Posted at 12:25 am on Jul 5th, 2006 by Corey

see in the 2gb ipod nano i could swear i saw it had 2 slots and the 4gb the same but now ppl are saying it has one i have like 3 nanos to spare so ill figure it out i am just having trouble opening it up

Posted at 2:20 pm on Jul 5th, 2006 by Toked323

it works, use ipod linux to access the extra memory, just be careful not to burn the pads where the chips soldered, the board is crap, extreamly fragile.

8 gb nano

sweeeettt.

Posted at 5:30 pm on Jul 13th, 2006 by john doe

john doe,
so you have managed to enable the pads for the second chip setting the proper resistor combination!.
Please, let us know which of the 5 resistors should be set / removed to make the board work as a 1Gb, 2Gb, 4gb , 8gb or 16gb.

thank you.

Posted at 6:53 am on Aug 1st, 2006 by isshou

the guy from comment #80 should buy these 8gb chips that the guy on #95 is talking about. is it not more realistic to replace the chips with latger ones than bouble them up?

Posted at 10:48 am on Aug 1st, 2006 by Greg

correction… #89 and #95.

Posted at 10:50 am on Aug 1st, 2006 by greg

anyone see this?
http://www.multiarcade.com/
looks legit

Posted at 8:27 am on Aug 2nd, 2006 by greg