Michael Drach said:
I intend to buy used SDRAM PC 133 DIMM module of 128 MB and I have a
question?
1. When I insert stick and if BIOS registers its capacity of 128 MB
during the boot and..
2. If I can start windows normally
Can I safely state that the stick I have tried is OK for my MB?
I have heard of problem with "new" and " old" SDRAM modules so that is
why I want to test it first!
Thanks,
MD
Probably. The problem with mixing ram is geometry. That is, ram is laid
out like a spreadsheet in rows and columns. If a motherboard will accept
128MB RAM sticks, that doesn't mean it will necessarily accept ALL 128MB ram
sticks, as it might not be able to address more than X rows or columns. If
you have a problem like this, either the motherboard won't recognize the ram
at all, or it will only use part of it. Thus, you have problems like a
128MB RAM board showing up as 64MB as the motherboard is only addressing
half of it. Another problem is that some motherboards will become unstable
with multiple RAM boards installed. It's best to limit the physical number
of RAM boards as much as possible. Thus, (1) 256MB RAM board would be
better than (2) 128MB RAM boards, although both combinations would probably
work OK. But throw another 128MB RAM board in with two existing, and you
could -possibly- have stability problems that wouldn't exist if you took
just one of them out.
So short answer is, if your bios recognizes the 128MB stick as 128MB,
windows boots normally, and windows sees the extra 128MB of RAM, then you
PROBABLY can safely state that the stick you have tried is OK for your
motherboard. But watch your system carefully for the next week or so, and
make sure that you don't have any "glitches" that you didn't have before
adding the new stick of RAM. -Dave
