This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 12:23:16 -0800 From: "Mark C. Langston" <mark@bitshift.org> To: James Leone <LINUXCPA@netscape.net> Cc: svlug@lists.svlug.org Cc: chris@mortoncpa.com Cc: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au Subject: Re: [svlug] Question about RD Ram Hardware/Dell On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 11:41:40AM -0800, James Leone wrote: > Hi lists, > > > I have a coworker that owns a pentium iv Dell at home with a dual rim. > It came with 128 MB RDRAM x2 and AFAWK it should work in pairs. He > recently ordered some 256 MB RD RAM to add to the two additional open > slots, the only difference being the 128 v 256 MB and the fact that one > set of chips are ECC while the others are not. He did buy Dell RAM chips. > > It didn't seem to work after the chips were installed. > > Could this be a hardware problem? > > Is there a special procedure he has to follow to get them to work? > > If it is a compatability issue, any suggestions on how he could get his > money back? I recently switched from AMD to a P4 RDRAM system, so this may or may not be entirely accurate. First, check to make sure the RDRAM he purchased is 16-bit, not 32-bit. 32-bit RDRAM is designed to be installed singly rather than in pairs, and will only work on motherboards that support 32-bit RDRAM. As far as I know, the only one that does is the ASUS P4T533. Second, try using the motherboard with _just_ the two new sticks of RDRAM. Recently there have been some problems with at least one vendor's supply of 256MB 16-bit PC1066 RDRAM (Kingston), and they had to recall a small set of batches. Third, make sure that ECC is turned off in the BIOS. Fourth, make sure that the RDRAM he already had and the RDRAM he jsut purchased matches in speed. There are two speeds of RDRAM: PC800 and PC1066 (aka 3x and 4x). The BIOS must be set to the slowest of the two if you're mixing PC800 and PC1066. He may have had PC1066 (and thus his BIOS is set accordingly), but he may have bought PC800, which -- though it _might_ run at PC1066 speeds -- would probably fail. That said, he may have mixed RDRAM vendors, which is not always a good idea. RDRAM is rather picky due to the extremely high bus speeds, and depending on the motherboard, the variability of the bus voltage -- some are less reliable than others. (Dell doesn't make RDRAM. They resell one or more vendors' RDRAM -- typically Kingston, Crucial, and Samsung.) Finally, more specificity regarding how "it didn't seem to work" would help. Perhaps it's running jsut fine, but not acknowledging the new RAM. In which case, it probably just needs to be reseated. === Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 12:10:59 -0800 From: Rafael Skodlar <raffi@linwin.com> To: James Leone <LINUXCPA@netscape.net> Cc: svlug@lists.svlug.org Cc: chris@mortoncpa.com Cc: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au Subject: Re: [svlug] Question about RD Ram Hardware/Dell Too bad. Need special memory for proprietary architectures like Dell. Check http://www.crucial.com and other places that sell memory otherwise you need to pay premium for it from Dell. ===