Complex sentence: Many small companies sprang up to address the memory issue by either upgrading the memory to 512 KB or removing the computer's 16 memory chips and replacing them with larger-capacity chips, a tedious operation that was not always successful.
Split into simpler sentences: Many small companies sprang up to address the memory issue. Suggestions revolved around either upgrading the memory to 512 KB or removing the computer's 16 memory chips and replacing them with larger-capacity chips, a tedious operation that was not always successful.