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I was thinking about a way to reuse the RAM of my old computer on my Arduino board. I was thinking about some peojects using neural networks, and more RAM would let the Arduino use more neurons.
So that's my question, how could I do that? Maybe soldering some cables to Tx/Rx pins and creating and interface between the board and the memory?
No, you can't connect your normal desktop computer memory to your Arduino. For a number of reasons:
The only way you will be able to interface DDR SDRAM with an Arduino is through some intermediate interfacing system that can do all the above for you. Your best candidate is to design an SPI to DDR conversion chip using an FPGA and Verilog or VHDL. That way you can communicate with the FPGA using SPI (or you could choose I2C if you like, or a simple 8-bit parallel protocol) and the FPGA then does all the grunt work that the Arduino isn't capable of.
However, while you're at it, you may as well put a CPU core in the FPGA (e.g., NIOS II or something) and do away with the Arduino altogether...
I know this is old, but it comes up on Google so here I am.
Forget about connecting any kind of modern computer RAM to an Arduino. Period.
However, an old school SIMM from the 80's/early 90's is very much possible to use with some effort and they're cheap enough to buy on eBay. These are the ones you would have usually found on a 386/486 or early Pentium system.
Here is an example: http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit
There are much easier and more cost-effective ways to add RAM to your 8-bit Arduino though. Look up SPI RAM. That's probably what you want. It's only a 4 pin connection, and numerous libraries already exist to interface with them.
If you try hard enough it might work, but it will not be easy.
In general there are 2 types of RAM. Static and Dynamic. You can cram a lot more memory into a Dynamic RAM chip so that is what is most likely in your computer. And probably what you are asking about in your question.
Dynamic memory needs to be refreshed continuously. Otherwise the data will be lost. This is such a repetitive and time consuming process that special hardware is used to relieve the processor of this task. In general, embedded processors such at the Atmel (used in most Arduinos) do not have such specialized hardware.
So it will be (very) difficult to use your computer memory in your Arduino.
That said, there are some specialized RAM chips that you can use with your Arduino. But they likely do not look like the memory chips in your computer.
