RAM riddle...

invigorAted · Post by **invigorAted** » 30 Jan 2006, 21:13

Need some help here...my friend has a Celeron 667 pc, he has no idea which mboard it is (I cant look, he lives 300km away).
He bought 256MB SDRAM (PC133)...but the PC detects it as a 128MB!
he's already exchanged it for a diff brand, same prob.
When he adds his old 32MB tho, it reads it fine and totals 159MB (dunno where the 1MB goes!) Anyone knows whats up?

AlphA · Post by **AlphA** » 30 Jan 2006, 21:25

Has he tried running the 256MB module by itself? It might be double-sided and all his banks are used.

naughty · Post by **naughty** » 30 Jan 2006, 21:27

maybe the mobo only recognises 128mb per slot - the only way to know is to find out what mobo it is and to check on the website or in the mobo manual as to how much ram is the maximum per slot

for example my asus mobo is restricted to up to 1gb per slot - in around three years time that may become a problem when you need around 8gb of ram for high end machines and even though im sure id have upgraded by then its gonna be bad news for the person who takes over my pc

AlphA · Post by **AlphA** » 30 Jan 2006, 21:46

Good point

invigorAted · Post by **invigorAted** » 30 Jan 2006, 22:13

guess the mobo name is vital in this case,which he cant find (manual is gone)...i guess we can persume so far that the problem is the slot restriction then, its the only thing i could come up with aswell...

naughty · Post by **naughty** » 30 Jan 2006, 22:29

doesnt the brand name and model of the mobo appear anywhere on the mobo - also if he doesnt have any cooling on the northbridge a brand name eg gigabyte or asus or abit together with a chipset model eg intel 915 (which this cant be but im giving an example of chipset model number)

this could point you to the right direction since most mobo's with similiar chipsets within a brand should have similiar if not identical specs

maybe he needs to remove some pci cards and look around for some relevant info screenprinted on the PCB itself

MrBean · Post by **MrBean** » 30 Jan 2006, 22:35

I will bet my knackers it is a PC100 board, who still remember those? And yes, it is a mobo related issue, if you can't find an update bios, you're stuffed.

I experienced this issue before on a friends pc.

Post by **maxxis** » 30 Jan 2006, 23:34

Hahaha. I remember those motherboards. Had endless problems with the HSF riser card modems. Not mentioning the total pain it was installing a PCI USB card. My cousin had one. It finally packed up about a week ago.

Sojourn · Post by **Sojourn** » 31 Jan 2006, 08:38

ahhh - good old memories.

s

ElDiablo · Post by **ElDiablo** » 31 Jan 2006, 14:46

I had the same problem a while back on an EPOX PIII board, it worked fine with single-sided 256Mb memory, but only read 128Mb with double-sided 256Mb memory. Get single sided ram if possible...

My question:
I purchased 2x 512Mb Kingmax DDR400 memory banks. The PC was extremely unstable and kept restarting and crashing, however it did pass the BIOS ram test. Prime95 fails immediately when I choose the torture test. So I removed one bank and the system was 100% stable, I sent it back to Esquire (who wasn’t very keen on replacing it by the way) and they gave me a new one. With the new one, the system is even more unstable. It can’t even boot into windows with both banks in Dual channel. It was stable in single channel mode, running at DDR333 and with a CL of 3, but only for a while and the system started crashing again.
I now tuned the voltage up to 2.6v on the ram, it seems stable now, dunno for how long…

Is my M/B fried?

invigorAted · Post by **invigorAted** » 31 Jan 2006, 17:21

Thanks for help guys, he found a code between the PCI slots, turns out to be MSI board...I went to their site, checked out the manual - blast! "Supports between 8MB and 128MB DIMM"....those were the days! So I guess the other 128MB on the chip will jus sit there and rust, shame. :huh:

Sojourn · Post by **Sojourn** » 31 Jan 2006, 17:23

Go to their website and see if a bios update wont free it up.

s

invigorAted · Post by **invigorAted** » 31 Jan 2006, 17:27

mmm my friend is very keen on PCs..dunno if I should let him do a BIOS update, u never know which buttons he'll press

But I dloaded d latest bios anyway...will email it to him with a document "I take no responsability..."

AlphA · Post by **AlphA** » 31 Jan 2006, 18:09

I think he should first read the BIOS updates to see if it fixes the "problem".....

supagx · Post by **supagx** » 31 Jan 2006, 18:22

Just a thought for everyone that has read or will read this thread:
If you cant find what motherboard is in a system, there is some very helpful software around that can help you out. One (which is free btw) is Everest. It gives you all the details bout your system. It might just come in handy one day.

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RAM riddle...

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