The 2nd dimm slot is internal, inside the system (but I did confirm with the eMachines rep that there really is a dimm in there, it's not some RAM soldered on the system board). It's not a field/user-replacable module. :(
Hence, unless you want to void the warranty, you've got to send it to eMachines and get an RMA for them to install the memory for you.
That's not good news, but at least they offered to do it for me under warranty.
As for the drive, it's a 60GB Toshiba 6021GAS, 4200RPM and 2MB cache (low end unit).
I can't try the memory suggestion without replacing both modules, so even if I were to do that, it would be a while before I could comment on the effect.... I can however say that the clock speed is not 2GHz but rather 1.8GHz.. 3 different OSes all report 1.8GHz.
On another subject - is AMD64 ACPI any better under 2.6.1? Because without ACPI for power management, you only get about 1 hr battery life under FC1, while with Win32 ACPI battery management, it's closer to 3 hours.
-ml
Brian Stretch wrote:
Still looking for the second dimm slot.. So far, I've only found 1, which means that the max would be 1.25GB.. The door on the bottom of the laptop only exposes a single slot.
Try emailing eMachines. They've been very good about replying to emails I've sent to them within hours. I don't always get the answer I want but they do appear cluefull. Be sure to tell them to smack Broadcom while you're at it.
Still, I'm disappointed they didn't document how to get to both DIMM slots in print. There's probably info in the online docs under Windows that you can't get to.
I have a suspicion that if you dropped in Corsair PC3200 SODIMMs in place of the included PC2700's you could tweak the BIOS for 400MHz memory and effectively have an Athlon 64 3200+. The specs they list, 1MB L2 and 2GHz clock, match those for a 3200+ with PC3200 memory. Using PC2700 subtracts 200 points on the TPI scale. I guess PC3200 SODIMMs were too hard to find in quantity? Just speculating here. Newegg.com has the Corsair SODIMMs.
BTW, is the included HD a 4200RPM drive or 5400? 2MB cache or 8MB? I haven't bought a notebook yet but when I come up with a proper excuse I'm planning on getting an eMachines 64-bit.