I've received the memory from Paul to upgrade my 2a to 32mb. A friend of a friend is hopefully going to be doing it at work as they have all the right stuff. However, she's not empeg aware.

So I was wondering if I can just send her the system board, psu and a serial cable, and if she'll then be able to test the empeg enough to know if the memory upgrade worked?

Yes. You should be able to hook up the serial port, flash the latest hijack on there and watch the boot cycle. You should be able to execute a memory test, along with the self test, and get boot logs of each.

Tasks which would probably be a bit tricky for someone who's not "empeg-aware"... They would need coaching on all of those steps.

Agreed. Perhaps pre-flashing the unit with the most recent hijack would be in order. As for the boot logs, that is pretty much covered in the FAQ, so generating instructions should be mostly harmless.

Thanks guys. Just checking it would still do something :-)

Got hijack v390 with ext3 already loaded. But as Tony said will require some coaching. Still trying to find out if she'll even have access to a PC while doing it. Of course she could be the best solderer in the world for all I know :-)

Sure the empeg will still work with no display board at all? I understand a dud VFD and it will still work but no board at all?

It might expect to be able to talk to the PIC that controls the buttons etc.

I was able to use mine, in a somewhat limited way, without the VFD. Granted, you couldn't see or control much without display module, but with alternate input (ethernet or serial) you can still control it.

OK. Cool. As long as it has been tried before. Wouldn't want to send only part of it away for it to not work.