If the board isn't damaged, you could much more easily (at the cost of the RAM chips which are apparently lost anyway) snip the chips off of the legs. Desoldering one pin at a time is terribly easy.
I've also had some luck with Radio Shack's desoldering iron with built-in suction bulb, but there's still usually a bit of fiddling to unstick the legs, usually after removing most of the solder with suction you have to wiggle the leg back and forth from below to break any remaining connections.
