RAM upgrade in internal fiery rip, xerox

[schwarzmuller]

I upgraded the internal fiery rip (v. 6e) of our xerox docucolor 240 with 1 gb ram.
When i check "server info" in cws, it still shows the old amount of ram, which was 764mb.
(even after server reboot)

Any ideas how to solve this?

 

[Craig]

Did you use the proprietary EFI Ram?

 

[schwarzmuller]

no, just bought ram with same specs. Efi ram was way too expensive.

I dont see why i should have used efi ram instead? The rip works with the new ram even without the old efi ram installed. The only thing is that its not recognised properly.
This is probably due to the fact its linux based. You need to tell that operating system when you change/upgrade hardware.

Hope that someone can give me a correct answer.

 

[JayDA]

I have tried putting many brands of RAM in many different Fierys over the course of the last 6 or 7 years....the short answer is....it doesn't work.

 

[schwarzmuller]

didnt a reinstall of the software work either?

Well i guess that the proprietary efi upgrade pack is shipped with a ps file, which needs to be processed by the rip and sets the correct parameter for the newly installed memory.
But thats what i think... confirmation anyone?

 

[EASYdoor]

This is probably due to the fact its linux based. You need to tell that operating system when you change/upgrade hardware.

There's no OS limitation whatsoever and linux has nothing to do with fiery!

The vendors are basically protected by two things:
1. the motherboard (usually it's an server motherboard which is very picky with module configuration)
2. the software limitation of their own software

In order to upgrade the memory on you're RIP for much less, you'll have to do a little experimenting:
1. find out the max size of the memory in you're RIP
2. use some sort of low level memory software to find out what kind of memory is in there
3. you'll have to buy some of that memory and experiment, if you have 4 memory banks, maybe only odd or even banks have to be full

That's the whole magic around memory and RIP's. And this works, i've upgraded efi and creo RIP's. Cheers!

 

[schwarzmuller]

Im sure the internal fiery rip is linux based, and you can't just upgrade hardware in a linux environment.
Another example : Try replacing the harddisk with a larger one, it will only show the original amount of gb of the older, smaller harddisk.

If the rip would only work with one type of ram, it shouldn't be working now. The old, original ram is removed and replaced by the larger new ram module.

 

[Bo3b]

Depends which Fiery rip you have - the bustled rips are linux based, not sure about memory upgrades on these. The larger rips are Windows based - again not too sure about the newer ones but the earlier rips used a setting in the boot.ini file (maxram) this is the amount of RAM that the operating system will use, the rest is used by the fiery application. If you have a FACI kit which allows you to run the CWS on the rip, you can edit the boot.ini file easily. I suppose this could also be done using RDC (remote desktop connection) to the rip which can be enabled on some of their rips.
Really old fiery rips used a kind of unix and used very particular ram which was only available from efi.

 

[UberTech]

I think you will find the Fiery pre allocates a section of memory for processing. The software is 'tuned' to this capacity so any extra memory you add will only enhance the performance of the host. I doubled the memory in one of Fierys and checked the 'process time' in the job log across 150 different files. The difference was negligible.

To make any substantial difference I would find out what processor the fiery had and find the fastest equivalent for the socket, well thats my next approach.

 

[schwarzmuller]

To make any substantial difference I would find out what processor the fiery had and find the fastest equivalent for the socket, well thats my next approach.

I was planning to do so, but keep in mind that the power supply could be insufficient...
So im not going to change the cpu.
A xerox technician is comming over today or next week, ill ask him about the ram upgrade.

 

[GusG]

I had "something" stuck to the back of one of my DC12s with a HDD and RAM in it, possibly a Cobra RIP but I couldn't find any indication of what it was really, and it was disconnected anyway.

I took out the RAM and put that in my Fiery X12 driving that DC12 and it worked just fine with CWS displaying the new memory.

 

[EASYdoor]

you can't just upgrade hardware in a linux environment.
Another example : Try replacing the harddisk with a larger one, it will only show the original amount of gb of the older, smaller harddisk.

1. You can't upgrade the memory of ANY OS, if the system is embedded - which means that the memory is already "burned" to the motherboard - so in that case if you decide to upgrade the fiery through dealers than they will replace the whole box. If it's not embedded than you can replace it with a bigger size, without a problem.

2. If you replace the drive with a larger one, and reinstall, it's the same size - because their partitioning was different. If you want to increase the disk size, the best way is to run Acronis True Image software in offline mode (with a boot cd or usb-stick - like hiren boot cd / minipe) create an image of that disk to external hard drive, put in the new drive and run restore from image you've saved, then the program figure's out that the destination disk is bigger that the source, off course you say expend, and whole thing is done. If anything goes wrong, you still have an older drive intact

If you expand the drive to a bigger size, we'll in my experience in about 90% it works, so if you need a bigger drive go for it.

 

[X33]

Do this:

1. Print a Fiery configuration page before putting the RAM
2. Print a Fiery configuration page after putting the RAM

Compare the RAM in both pages. If #2 is larger, then it's ok.

CWS will not show the actual RAM amount that you have physically installed in the Fiery. My understanding is that Fiery will take part of the RAM and set it apart for the operating system and use the rest for spooling and jobs. This second amount of RAM is what you see in CWS.

 

[GusG]

CWS will not show the actual RAM amount that you have physically installed in the Fiery. My understanding is that Fiery will take part of the RAM and set it apart for the operating system and use the rest for spooling and jobs. This second amount of RAM is what you see in CWS.

In my case CWS definitely showed the 256MB extra that I'd put in as that much extra working memory, I was upgrading from a mere 96MB so it was also very evident in the ripping times as well.

 

[Bo3b]

The fiery's rip to RAM and then when that's full applies compression and then saves the rasters to disk. When printing it retrieves the rasters from disk and prints from RAM.
More RAM might not increase the performance but it will reduce the amount of compression that needs to be applied per page - I've seen pages with multiple images improves noticeably once more RAM was put in the RIP. If you also increase the maxram setting I mentioned earlier, performance does improve slightly as the operating system now has more RAM to use.

 

[GusG]

The fiery's rip to RAM and then when that's full applies compression and then saves the rasters to disk. When printing it retrieves the rasters from disk and prints from RAM.
More RAM might not increase the performance

Any time you start using a HDD as virtual memory you will always see a sharp decrease in performance over using RAM

 

[schwarzmuller]

Do this:

1. Print a Fiery configuration page before putting the RAM
2. Print a Fiery configuration page after putting the RAM

Compare the RAM in both pages. If #2 is larger, then it's ok.

It is larger indeed, it shows the correct amount of ram, 1024MB.

CWS will not show the actual RAM amount that you have physically installed in the Fiery. My understanding is that Fiery will take part of the RAM and set it apart for the operating system and use the rest for spooling and jobs. This second amount of RAM is what you see in CWS.

I don't understand this. Before, there was physically 768MB ram installed. In cws it showed also 768MB. So fiery took all the ram, leaving none for the operating system?

The fiery's rip to RAM and then when that's full applies compression and then saves the rasters to disk. When printing it retrieves the rasters from disk and prints from RAM.
More RAM might not increase the performance but it will reduce the amount of compression that needs to be applied per page - I've seen pages with multiple images improves noticeably once more RAM was put in the RIP. If you also increase the maxram setting I mentioned earlier, performance does improve slightly as the operating system now has more RAM to use.

No faci kit and no rdc...
Adding more ram improves image quality? Or did i misunderstood?

 

[Bo3b]

Adding more RAM won't always improve image quality. In some cases it will reduce the amount of compression required to fit the raster in memory, hence improving the quality of the print. Really only noticeable on pages with lots of images or large (in physical size) images.
The example I've seen was an SRA3 page with ~20 images on it - some images printed fine but one or two images were very badly affected by compression. More RAM made all images print correctly. If previously the fiery did not have to compress the images then there will be no improvement in image quality by adding more RAM - but there may be some improvement in ripping speed.