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Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

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Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#41

Post by robotnikman »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #26
ribit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is, but I am afraid the next thing Apple will do now would > be to DRM the memory chips. Why "afraid"? I hope you are not considering resoldering BGA chips on tightly integrated machine a viable upgrade path?

Maybe not GP directly, but this could be a possibility for an "upgrade as a service". I have no idea what the cost of desoldering and resoldering the modules is, but given Apple's markup on RAM and SSD, it might make it worthwhile, just as there are many shops doing repairs on iPhones.

I've thought of this myself. As devices get more integrated, it could be worth having a professional with the right tools and machinery to upgrade laptops/phone/tablets by unsoldering and re-soldering in new modules.

Upgrade your RAM for cheaper, replace NAND Flash modules near their write capacity or slowing down with fresh ones, breathing new life into a device...

There might be a market for it, also it would be an eco friendly way of upgrading old devices so they remain usable instead of throwing them away and creating more e-waste

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#42

Post by pascoej »

You can get a recycled 512gb iPhone NAND for ~50USD.

You might have to copy the original SYSCFG (containing stuff like mac addresses, calibration, etc) to one of the new NANDs using something like http://www.jcidtech.com/product/product-86-806.html

All the iDevices (including laptops since at least T1) use the same NAND packages. Pre-iPhone 8 / T2 devices use a BGA60 package, while NANDs in devices after that use a BGA110 package.

For example, the NAND chip found in the iFixit teardown of the 2019 16 inch (TSB4227) is explicitly listed as supported by the programmer linked above: https://i.imgur.com/06a0KEg.jpg

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#44

Post by squarefoot »

Klwohu wrote: post #40
squarefoot wrote: post #31

What I find outrageous is that consumers accept the fact that their expensive new Mac has become a non upgradable black box. Apparently, years of exposure to the dependency from tight closed cellphones did the job. Long gone are the days of the Apple II; I still recall it being labeled as the best possible home computer for being so open to expansion and tinkering.

I've got this old HP-42s calculator here in front of me, which has no viable upgrade path, and adjusted for inflation it was more expensive than an entry level M1. I have an HP-67 and an HP-97 as well, neither of which has any upgrade path and they each cost half as much as a new economy car when they came out.

They were different products for different tasks, and the fact that they can still be used after decades shows how much they're different from a computer, particularly a modern computer. Today not being able to upgrade the RAM or storage, or having a non replaceable battery can mean halving the life of a product, which in today figures would not be like 15 years instead of 30 but rather 2.5 instead of 5.

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#45

Post by GeekyBear »

There's a video of a western guy living in China learning to desolder Flash memory chips from an iPhone and then solder higher capacity chips in their place from back in 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP-OPXK2ig

Being in Shenzhen China, he was able to buy the needed tools and many broken boards to practice on, and eventually managed to do it on a live board himself.

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#46

Post by rubyfan »

quyleanh wrote: post #38
rubyfan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left immediately when it showed a fake ‘update your VPN’ iOS system notification. Didn’t even get to read the article.

Actually this news is still not confirmed well. There are less tech sites talk about that. And since I use ads blocker, I have no problem with that.

that was the odd thing, I use two ad blockers so was surprised to see such an obvious fake ‘VPN notification’ that I knew it was an ad or malware.

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#47

Post by Klwohu »

squarefoot wrote: post #44
Klwohu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got this old HP-42s calculator here in front of me, which has no viable upgrade path, and adjusted for inflation it was more expensive than an entry level M1. I have an HP-67 and an HP-97 as well, neither of which has any upgrade path and they each cost half as much as a new economy car when they came out.

They were different products for different tasks, and the fact that they can still be used after decades shows how much they're different from a computer, particularly a modern computer. Today not being able to upgrade the RAM or storage, or having a non replaceable battery can mean halving the life of a product, which in today figures would not be like 15 years instead of 30 but rather 2.5 instead of 5.

I still use an over ten year old Thinkpad as my daily driver. It’s not as dire as all that.

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#48

Post by anfilt »

cr3ative wrote: post #5
anfilt wrote: post #2

A little more details on how would be nice.

What kind of details? It's all pictured really - find the memory or storage chips, replace the chips. It's difficult/impossible without specialised tools, but nice that the OS accepts this modification without throwing a wobbly.

Its generally a little more than removing the chips with a hot air rework station, and soldering larger ones. I am sure the sizes of the RAM and flash chips is also set in firmware on the main SoC. You would also have to update those values in firmware.

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#49

Post by anfilt »

Shadonototro wrote: post #35
squarefoot wrote: post #31

What I find outrageous is that consumers accept the fact that their expensive new Mac has become a non upgradable black box. Apparently, years of exposure to the dependency from tight closed cellphones did the job. Long gone are the days of the Apple II; I still recall it being labeled as the best possible home computer for being so open to expansion and tinkering.

How people expect to, at the same time, having thin, light, fanless laptop, and it being fully upgradeable with replaceable parts i think the people who want that are either delusional, or are just not the target audience looking at the sales, it's probably only just people who like to complain at Apple for doing what they can't do

the connectors for storage and ram can be very low profile. There is no reason any sane layout with connectors would add to the thickness. Its especially egregious storage is a soldered device. Not just from an upgrade standpoint but data recovery point of view.

If some other part fails and basically makes the device a brick there is now no easy way to recover the data.

Re: Chinese engineers cracked Apple's M1 chip and successfully upgrade RAM and SSD

#50

Post by squarefoot »

Klwohu wrote: post #47
squarefoot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were different products for different tasks, and the fact that they can still be used after decades shows how much they're different from a computer, particularly a modern computer. Today not being able to upgrade the RAM or storage, or having a non replaceable battery can mean halving the life of a product, which in today figures would not be like 15 years instead of 30 but rather 2.5 instead of 5.

I still use an over ten year old Thinkpad as my daily driver. It’s not as dire as all that.

My X240 isn't yet 10 years old, but as of today is among the fastest machines in my house: It literally flies with Debian+XFCE. It's remarkable how long hardware can last if we ditch bloated software.
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