Ion Update question

[billf1]

There is an ION 2006.5 for sale near me, I was thinking about picking it up, and for ~350 on eBay have seen that you can get updated 2014 software/key and 512 of RAM.  Will this upgrade work, or do you actually need a newer machine?

This seems like a dumb questions, but I just want to confirm before I find out my assumption may be wrong.  If I were to buy 2014 software, would it include all new games for all years, or would you have to buy each year to get that years new games (I assume it is all games - but I know these machines load the games to a hard drive - so limited to that years additions would be possible)?

[mahkeymike]

Make sure you get 184 pin ddr1 ram if you get an older ION system with the purple motherboard, or the asus motherboard. The newer widescreen aurora and RX ION systems have the intel ITX motherboard and requires only one 240 pin ddr2 ram stick. And yes you can upgrade any ION system to 2014. Some games over the years get updated (graphics,pictures,trivia questions), or replaced. They are usually old games that were not popular. You will get all the latest new games from every year though.  But if you for some reason wanted to have every single game that was ever on an Ion system, yes you would need to buy each year. But i am not sure if there was any games removed from Ion since its first year was only 2006.

[billf1]

Thanks.  That is what I was hoping, I am not even sure what all was introduced which years.  I really like the "11" games (there was one with pool balls and one with like discs or something) and the photohunt games, and word dojo, but I don't have any Idea when they came out, and just wanted to make sure that if I were to buy one and the lastest games I would get them all.

Does anyone know what year they switched to the Intel motherboard?  This is probably when the switched to SATA Hard Drives as well (if this is not correct let me know), and I have heard those systems are much more reliable.

[mahkeymike]

They added support for the Intel board when they released 2009.5. You would need a 2009 key and 2009.5 Ion software install discs. They can be downloaded directly from the megatouch website by using there download manager. You can use SATA drives with the ASUS and Intel board. You can also use ANY hard drive with ION systems/software. You do not need an official hard drive. You will get a warning when installing, but it will still install and work on a non official hard drive. Ebay sellers will try to trick you so you buy an "official" used or refurbished hard drive for 2x times as much as a new non official hard drive.

[billf1]

Wow, thanks!

I have seen those, where "New" MegaTouch hard drives are very expensive, and the sellers say to avoid the scam of cheap 'used' ones.  LOL, so they are basically both scamming.

[lilshawn]

neither harddrive is as reliable as they once where. the SATA ones are failing quicker than the old ATA drives.

merit in their infinite wisdom actually flash the harddrives with custom firmware that ID it as a "merit" drive.

at the same time they F'ed up the SMART on them and the drive no longer remaps bad sectors because they also reduce the reported size of the drive the controler reports to the BIOS. 

a brand new 120gb HD from merit gets reported as a 60 GB  drive to the BIOS.

i don't know if it's just to make it easy to clone or what, but they screwed it up. the drives get bad sectors and they can't be remapped and the drives are pooched.

since force 2005.5 and up you can use a non-merrit drive no problem anyways.

60GB SSD's go on sale all the time. throw one of them in there and reduce boot times by 1/2.

[mahkeymike]

lilshawn, The reason a 120gb is being reported as a 60gb is because most likely its a refurbished drive. Basicly they took,lets say a 120gb toshiba hard drive, and took the stock controller out and replaced it with a toshiba 60gb custom flashed controller. The custom flash can only read the 60gb on the drive. They did this i believe to save money and get rid of old stock. It cost money to have these things custom flashed. Also, companys like toshiba are not going to custom flash the hard drives unless you are buying thousands of them. I doubt they were even selling that many megatouch systems toward the end. Hense why they opted to buy stock 120gb or larger drives and swap out the controllers from smaller custom "merit" controllers.