imagePASS-J1 upgrade possibilities.

[skelband]

Hi,
[Apologies if this is a little off-topic for this board]

Does anyone have access to service documentation for the imagePASS-J1 that they could point me to?

I find that the unit is a bit slow responding over the net with the web admin facility and communication with EFI Command Workstation and I'm interested in exploring hardware update possibilities to make it a little more nippy.

For the most part, it seems to be just a custom PC running an early Linux.
I've had some success with CPU/memory/disk upgrades on NAS boxes in the past which made a big difference to performance.
A lot of these older machines are pretty locked down through and most have fairly minimal BIOSes for CPU support.

An disk upgrade to SSD seems like a simple, no-brainer but before I move onto more invasive modding, I thought it would be prudent to see if anyone knows of any resources where others have looked into this.

Cheers,
skelband

[Phil B.]

Hi,
[Apologies if this is a little off-topic for this board]
Does anyone have access to service documentation for the imagePASS-J1 that they could point me to?
I find that the unit is a bit slow responding over the net with the web admin facility and communication with EFI Command Workstation and I'm interested in exploring hardware update possibilities to make it a little more nippy.
For the most part, it seems to be just a custom PC running an early Linux.
I've had some success with CPU/memory/disk upgrades on NAS boxes in the past which made a big difference to performance.
A lot of these older machines are pretty locked down through and most have fairly minimal BIOSes for CPU support.
An disk upgrade to SSD seems like a simple, no-brainer but before I move onto more invasive modding, I thought it would be prudent to see if anyone knows of any resources where others have looked into this.
Cheers,
skelband

i doubt if you could put an SSD in it.. they are having failures before time.
as for 'speeding' up the process.. no new processor can be installed.. more ram might help..
more likely it due to speed of network etc.. something you haven't given info on.

[skelband]

i doubt if you could put an SSD in it.. they are having failures before time.
as for 'speeding' up the process.. no new processor can be installed.. more ram might help..
more likely it due to speed of network etc.. something you haven't given info on.

The network that the copier is on is very quiet and completely hardwired and 100baseT, so it is unlikely to be a factor unless the comms are very talky.

You raise a very good point though: perhaps I should get Wireshark on the job.
Looking at the comms timings will give me some insight into what is causing the delays.
It could be a network problem that I didn't know I had, a particularly talky protocol, slow client or slow imagePASS.

[alex@wocltd.com]

you can clone working hdd on the j1 - to an ssd ,but wont get any gains......

[skelband]

you can clone working hdd on the j1 - to an ssd ,but wont get any gains......

I'm inclined to agree.
It *might* help the Linux system to be a little more responsive (it did wonders for my laptop) but I think a little more analysis would be in order to determine what the slowness is down do. I can't imagine that the machine is running a lot of different services.

TBH some more memory and perhaps a slightly quicker CPU might help.

I did upgrade an old HP NAS box from its original single core CPU to a dual core Intel E5200 some time ago and although it ran slightly hotter and required some better thermal paste, it made a massive difference in its responsiveness over the network. The BIOS only supported certain stepping variants so I had to get exactly the right one but it did work.

Thanks for the responses.
I will stick a monitor on the VGA port and plug a keyboard in tonight to see what I see and report back if anyone is interested.
Early days as yet.

[skelband]

OK, I had a closer look last night after blasting all the dusty cr*p out of it.

Phil B. was right. The CPU is a BGA so no luck there. I didn't take off the heatsink, didn't seem much point but it looks like it's a single core Celeron.

Eclectic combination of technologies though. One SATA connector but 256MB of only DDR1 memory. I kinda expected something like DDR2-800 for that age of machine.
Well, I can put in an SSD and upgrade the memory with another stick of 256MB from Ebay but it looks like that's kinda it. That might make a little difference but I had my hopes pinned on a 2 core CPU upgrade. Never mind.

Some pictures of the inside enclosed if anyone is interested. Looks like a custom motherboard.

Interesting aside though. The connectors on the side label the imaging system connector as "VIDEO" whereas the video is obviously the nearby VGA connector. The documentation that I have says the same. Strange.

[alex@wocltd.com]

so out of intrigue why do you want to upgrade the rip it strikes me that its like making an ice cream van into a convertible?

[skelband]

Well I guess I have an instinct to optimize and upgrade equipment in my care.
What would have been prohibitively expensive 10 years ago, can be picked up from Craigslist for pennies or free, so why not?

The other thing is that is seems a little slow to respond on the copier touchscreen for the settings and over the net with EFI Command Workstation.
I don't really have an expectation as to how responsive either are supposed to be, but as long as I don't break it, then why not enhance the machine to its full potential if it is straightforward and cheap?

There is a breed of people that can't help it. My copiers have to be spotless and should work flawlessly. I guess I just have that in me.

I also have an HP Laserjet 5si that is now fully upgraded to the maximum SIMM memory of (from memory) 24MB. Why? Because I could!

[techandtrader]

I still have one operational at my shop. It has the latest firmware 1.1 and the take off can be slow. Will be putting a B1 online soon to upgrade.

[skelband]

Hi,
A quick update if anyone is interested and for future reference.
Both the imagePass-J1 and the C3080 take standard DDR 333Mhz DIMM modules with CL2.5 or better latency timings.

Both work perfectly.
They are all over Ebay etc.

You can put a 256MB module into the imagePass and 512MB into the C3080.

Cheers,
Ralph