Comments on: Taking apart and upgrading Sony Vaio Z505 laptop

By: Michael DeCorte

Michael DeCorte — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:41:58 +0000

I’ve tried to upgrade the Sony Z505R from 128+256M to 128+512M. It partially worked. I found a 512M DIMM that was PC100, 16 Chip and CL2. The laptop boots without issue, but only 256M of the DIMM is found.

http://www.oempcworld.com/OEMPCworld-com/512M-SO100.html

Regarding the details on the Z505R

BIOS: W2K04Z0
Memory: 128 + 256 MB = 320 MB
Disk: 320 GB
OS: Xubuntu 10.04

By: Michael DeCorte

Michael DeCorte — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 14:02:34 +0000

Thank you Alan. This is good information.

A little bit to add, I recently upgraded my Sony Z505R to 320MB ram. I purchased a 256M DIMM just to give it a try. After a little effort it works great. The BIOS recognized the ram and so did Xubunto.

The only problem was that the RAM didn’t physically fit. The memory chip is a very tiny bit too wide to sit flat due to some chips on the motherboard. A very little bit of filing of the edges of the chips on the DIMM fixed that. It’s just a faction of a MM.

I’m sure that other memory chips could work, but I went with:

http://www.memorystock.com/orderitem.asp?it=360ms-077-M

which is a Micron mt16lsdf3264hg-10eb2 DIMM. I suspect (but don’t know) that the memory must be:

- 16 Chip
- PC100
- CL2

Regarding the details on the Z505R

BIOS: W2K04Z0
Memory: 128 + 256 MB = 320 MB
Disk: 320 GB
OS: Xubuntu 10.04

BTW, to install Xubuntu I couldn’t use the Sony CD. Instead I connected the HD to another computer and installed from there.

By: Laptop Tech

Laptop Tech — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:42:50 +0000

Thank you Alan,
I updated the link. It points directly to the article now.

By: Alan Miller

Alan Miller — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:27:27 +0000

The link for the Third Guide works, but is not guaranteed to work in the future. The recommended link is to go to fencepost.net or directly to the article. The guide has just been updated as well, with quite a bit more explanatory text.