Wow, that IS interesting. That was a pretty straight forward answer (typical of Bill Buck contrary to what many have said about him).
So there might be answer to the problem, if someone can make sense of the firmware.
The hardware doesn't intimidate me. Can anyone let me know what chips the Efika uses. Can I assume the pads on the bottom of the board are the same as the pads the existing memory is soldered to? Are there any gates, buffers, resistors, capacitors or other components that need to be added along with the memory.
I look into the hardware, then all we need is someone who can enable the extra memory via the firmware.
I assume the board will still work OK (as a 128MB board) with the extra memory installed so maybe we ought to explore this.
I appreciated the phone conversation with Bill Buck, no matter what other people have had problems with him in the past, he was very straight forward and open with me on the phone. I am sure he, like almost all other businessmen, has his dark side, or sometimes does things that others do not like, but I have no bad history with him or Genesi, so did not prejudge him in any way.
Somone has already tried to add RAM just be finding matching RAM chips and soldering them to the bottom solder pads. It didn't work and he ended up removing them. I would have to re-read his posts to see if it still ran, but only recognized the original 128mb of RAM when he had the additional 128mb soldered to the board.
I am still very interested in having someone solve this problem and figure out how to add at least an additional 128mb of RAM to the Efika, but after the long argument with the Genisi employee who did his best to tell me it was impossible and after getting the straight answer from Bill Buck via phone call, I had given up on this ever happening. The hard part will be altering the firmware without running into any legal problems. I have no doubt that finding RAM chips that will work could be done and I also have no doubt that someone could figure out how to re-flash the firmware to recognize additional RAM. Altering the firmware is prohibited by Genesi, so that is the sticky part.
Since used PPC Mac hardware is so cheap to obtain and the few new Efika boards that are still available are still selling for $99, or more depending on which supplier you can find them from, and the fact that even the slowest supported G4 PowerMac is much faster and has less problems with USB and IDE than the Efika, it does not make much sense for anyone to work on this project. Since the Efika was my first experience with MorphOS and I already have a license for it, I would love to have the chance to upgrade my own Efika to 256mb, or 512mb of RAM, as I love the small form factor and the extreme low power consumption, but even though I would be willing to pay someone a reasonable amount for a solution to adding RAM to my Efika, there is not much money to be made for anyone who figures out how to solve this problem. It would be a project just to do for the challenge of doing it, instead of a way to make extra money. If it can be done and the right RAM chips can be found, I imagine that the solution would also allow people with soldering skills to remove their existing 128mb of RAM and replace it with 256mb on top of the board in it's place and another 256mb on the bottom for a total of 512mb, as altering the firmware to recognize 512mb would be no different than altering it to recognize any other amount of RAM.
So, if anyone wants to take on this project and is not afraid of being sued by Genesi for altering their firmware for the Efika board, please contact me when you have finished and figured it out. I will be the first one in line to get my Efika board upgraded, as long as it doesn't cost me a fortune to do it.
Edit: Here is link to a video about Genesi and firmware for their products, including the 5200b Efika board. I don't know if it has any useful information.
http://www.genesi-usa.com/demo/firmware
