[X4U] Testing RAM (was Re: RAM lessons even the stubborn can learn)

[Zane H. Healy]

At 8:31 PM -0800 11/25/05, Jim Robertson wrote:
>Always hoping to save a few bucks, I'm stubbornly learning the same lessons
>over and over.
>
>Last year I bought two "generic" 1 Gigabyte PC3200 DIMMS for my G5 dual. The
>machine read them as 512 Megabyte sticks. I complained to the vendor, who
>said I needed to buy "Mac-specific" DIMMs (for more money). He agreed to
>cross-ship the new DIMMs, which worked.
>
>Today, eager to equip my Al PB for Aperture, I upped its memory from 512
>Megabytes to 1.5 Gigabytes with a Kingston "generic" 1 Gigabyte PC2700
>SODIMM. I rebooted, confirmed I had 1.5 gigs in "About this Mac", then ran
>"memtest" from the command line in single user mode. It passed, so I
>congratulated myself on the $30 I'd saved.
>
>However, once the PowerBook went to sleep, I couldn't wake it up. Then it
>began to freeze on boot, despite numerous resets of the power manager,
>nvram, etc., etc.

In spite of this thread, I decided to be brave today, I was able to 
get 2 1GB PC3200 CL3 Matched Kingston sticks at a reasonable price, 
and I had to go into the store anyway to exchange a dead HD. 
Basically I paid two-thirds what a 2GB Kit of Kingston RAM for the G5 
would have cost, and I'm actually threatening to go buy another 2GB 
if this pair works out.

I'm now sitting with 3.5GB of RAM, and I'm trying to get things 
tested.  So far I've filled things up so that I didn't have any RAM 
free, and it seemed to work.  I've also downloaded "memtest" from 
http://www.memtestosx.org (is this the same utility everyone is 
talking about?).  I've also verified that putting the computer to 
sleep and waking it up seems to work.

With 3.5GB of RAM, it looks like the best way to run "memtest" is in 
multiuser mode, and to run three copies for 5 loops each, that way it 
checks all the RAM it can.  I gather in Singleuser mode it would only 
test something like 1.8GB.

Anyone know of any other things I should test?

Since this is RAM that's sold as a matched pair, and intended for 
higher performance PC's I felt a little safer than I would have going 
for just two sticks of PC3200 RAM.

			Zane


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| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
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