Adding RAM to a Cisnet NASCAR PC NCL3006 notebook

I recently purchased a NASCAR PC NCL3006 made by Cisnet sold at Newegg.com . According to the specs, it has two memory slots. I would like to add 1GB RAM to the remaining slot. It came with 512MB RAM. I have looked for the slots but cannot find it when I remove the covers from under the laptop. I read in one of the customer reviews that the memory slots are under the keyboard. I guess I would have to unscrew the main case to get to under the keyboard. Anyone done this before? Please give some tips if you have. Thanks in advance.

 

I'm not sure where exactly the memory slots are located, however, since you have 512 MB in total at the moment and you want to upgrade to 1 GB, you can either use one module of 1GB density, or two with densities of 512 MB each. You will most likely have two modules that are 256 MB in the notebook at the moment. So, you will have to remove one at least to upgrade. I suggest you go with one module with 1 GB density, because it will let you upgrade to 2GB if you need to. You will lose the ability of using dual channel, however, that very rarely makes a difference in performance.

 

I just got the info from Cisnet tech support. First open the top up ALL the way. Next you need to carefully pop off the piece that runs above the keyboard, start from one side and move to the other. Once that is off you can take off the keyboard.
You should now see 2 covers that are mirror images of each other. This is the first step were you will need a screwdriver (a very small headed philips). My laptop had its 512 chip under the left one, and I inserted the new one under the right.

Hope this helps!
Mike

 

Hmm - I'm in the same boat. Just bought one off newegg. I was in the market for something better - but hard to argue with the price.

I was planning on upgrading the RAM myself, but I couldn't figure it out either. I removed the piece above the keyboard (the long black strip that runs from speaker to speaker right?) I couldn't see how to remove the keyboard from there. Is there a clip somewhere? I gave a few tugs on some of the keys, but it seems like the keys would pull off before the keyboard did. That made me think I needed to remove the entire top casing (not just the strip above the top).

As is was I decided to give up until I had a chance to do some more research. I removed the NASCAR stickers (took a little googone to clean up the residue) and then started cleaning up the desktop. I also had to enter the BIOS to enable the wireless card (F2, not DEL like I'm used to). Contrary to one of the comments I saw on newegg, I could not turn on the card by pressing the wireless key on the power button. Once I enabled it in BIOS I was able to turn it off and on with the wireless key though.

After being powered on for about 2 hours I started getting lots of BSOD's. After about another hour it wouldn't even boot windows. I tried to do the recovery from the hard drive, but it kept BSOD'ing during the recovery. I tried to do a recovery from DVD (which I just made when I first turned it on). The recovery DVD rebuilds the recovery partition successfully, but then when it starts to remake the C: partition and copy files, it starts getting all kinds of errors and after a few min of that it BSOD's also. I finally took out my old WIN XP CDROM and tried to do a new install. I tried about a dozen times and it started erroring on various file copies too. I never could get a working install. I used the WIN XP CDROM to get to a pseudo DOS propt and ran CHKDSK, about 1/4 of the times I run it it finds an error with the hard drive. The limited commands you have don't include any sort of memory check utility.

I'm assuming I have some bad sectors on the hard drive, but it could be faulty RAM too. I have another stick of DDR333 RAM I can pull from my old machine, so if I can figure out how to pop the top I may swap out RAM and retest. I suppose I could pull hard drive too, but my old machine is still holding on by a thread, so I don't really want to pull the hard drive. (I'm not sure I have all the drivers to reinstall it back into my old machine either)

So that leaves me with trying to swap RAM. If someone could be more descriptive in the processof getting to the RAM, I'd appreciate it. It's probably simple, but I'm not seeing it.

Now that I removed my stickers I may have a hard time returning it - even if it did only work for about 2 hours. We'll see.


(as a side note and somewhat off topic) anyone know about a extended battery for this thing? I saw a comment on newegg that it is compatable with one of the acer's. I guess if someone knows the OEM for this, that may help too.

 

Please dont take the whole thing apart. I have added a link to the pictures of getting at the memory. The keyboard just snaps out.

goto "http://www.geocities.com/mnccollins"

 

Awsome - I had done just like you did in the first picture, but my keyboard wasn't just "lifting out" like your was in the 2nd pic. I've currently sent it back for RMA (see above) so I'll try it again when I get it back.

Thanks again.

 

Found the OEM mentioned on newegg. It's a re-branded aopen openbook 2000. If you search AOPEN's website you can find a better manual and drivers. CISNET's website is severly lacking.

 

My steps for memory upgrade:

I had some problems installing a second 512 memory module to my NASCAR/Cisnet PC in that after the installation I recieved 3 beebs and no boot up. Cisnet tech support was of no assistance.

THe issue was that the 2 512 meg modules I was installing were of different brands. Each worked by iteself but they were incompatible together.

Be certain that the 2 modules are compatiple.Use DDR 1, not DDR 2 RAM, 333 mhz bus speed. Also, use the pictures posted above for removing the cover.

Hope this helps and good luck