Hi Orion
Discontinued according to this KB article from Jan 
If you could that would be awesome! If you could also provide PCB dimensions that would be great!
Thanks!
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I would email elektron from your account to confirm/double check that. They are literally the nicest tech support ever so maybe they have some extra. Ill report back with pictures when i get a chance.
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Here ya go. Looks like a hynix h26m2100dar and a 74hc86d are the main chips. Have no idea how or with what youd flash the e nand but im def curious.
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Could it be done by the machine itself? I’ve got no idea how this level of digital electronics works, but would that be the initialisation it does on first boot?
Oh yeah i think they flash the drive and the unit together.
Thanks Orion that’s awesome. Wasn’t expecting the photos so quickly so thanks for that.
I raised a support ticket with Elektron on Sunday but not had anything back yet. I asked if they had any left and also if they would be prepared to release information so that the Elektron community could start to build these. I expect the answer to be no to both questions to be honest.
The NAND chips are quite old now but I’ve managed to find somewhere that has stock.
Problem is, I was hoping that the photos would give me enough information to proceed but they don’t so I think the only way to get this done would be to have a +Drive in my possession.
If anyone knows of one being sold then I’d appreciate letting me know!
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Like i said, i love a good reverse engineering project, i once did so with some photos so i empathize with you.
I also did a quick search for those nands and it looks like they are hard to come by so if you found some might be worth snagging them (its probably why they are not making them anymore). Did you happen to find a datasheet sheet for them? Im looking for the pinout diagram cause it looks like the nand pins are connected to the resistor and capacitors with via holes.
Ive never been able to desolder a bga (ball grid array) without destroying the pcb otherwise id take mine apart. Are you able to do so?
Either way i would probably chip in (bad dad pun) for you to get ur hands on a +drive. Seems like this would be a great service to this community if elektron is no longer making them.
I spent a while looking for a datasheet but couldn’t find one unfortunately. Found one for a later model Hynix NAND chip though but obviously cant use that. Rather annoyingly Hynix don’t have anything on their website - only seems to be datasheets for their current products which I suppose is understandable. I’ve raised a support ticket with them so we’ll see if that bears fruit!
Absolutely no experience with BGA but I have a hot air gun for some SMD work I’ve performed in the past and seen a youtube video of someone replacing a BGA chip so think I will be fine.
Thanks for the offer of chipping in but it’s finding one in the first place that’s the issue! TBH I think I’m going to have to buy a machinedrum that already has a +Drive in order to get my hands on one and then just sell it once I’m done. That isn’t going to happen for a few months though as have quite a lot of expenditure coming up in the next month or so.
Do you know if the +Drive is the same across all models of Machinedrums and Monomachines? If so I’d be tempted to buy quite a few of the NAND chips so I can make a few and sell them. Wonder if there would be much demand for them.
Check that thread, someone took a monomachine +drive and put it in a machinedrum successfully. Not sure if elektron did board revisions tho.
Wondering out loud what ram sticks used that version of nand.
Found this nand being used on this thing Dell PowerEdge M610 Riser Board 0T00R Tested Warranty | eBay
Still doesnt give you a datasheet or pinout but its a start.
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for what it’s worth, if i super impose my photos of the +drive im able to get a general idea of where the pinouts are on the nand.
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Looks like a great project! Would definitely be up for upgrading my MD!
Could you guys make any progress?
Cheers!
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Any movement on this?
Me too. At the time the upgrades were made available, I could only afford to upgrade one machine, so I opted for adding Drive+ to the MM because it made more sense to me than doing that for the MD. I’ve been OK with the decision until maybe 5 years ago when I thought, “dammit, it would have been cool to have Drive+ in my MD too!” especially with the prices these silly things are going for.
I can barely put the stickers straight in my M:S…
I have not been able to locate the nand chips but ill keep looking.
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Nand is just an inverted ‘and’ gate; but remember you can basically build a processor with just and/or (and their inversions) gates; so I think you could build the chip by many different means. How they interface/organize the gates is the magic part. You could build it with an FPGA and CAD tools I guess… But how is beyond me. I just started my first FPGA project at school, with a measly total of 3 gates 
not much exciting tech to be made at that rudimentary level…
Is there no added memory involved with the +drive?
I guess “NAND” here refers to the memory chip technology “NAND-flash” and not the logic gate.
Seems totally doable project as long as the memory chip or technical equivalent is still available.
Unfortunately not. I need to get hold of a +drive and since I started this thread I’ve had an eBay search saved in case someone sells one by itself but in all this time I have not seen one for sale. This means the only option is to buy another Machinedrum that already has a +drive which I’m prepared to do when I have the funds. Unfortunately that won’t be for a while because I have a lot of expenses this year so will likely be the end of the year/start of next before I can make any progress whatsoever. It’s still my intention to do this but just going to have to wait a bit longer.
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