RAM problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
  • Start date Start date
J

John

Hello,

I have two RAM sticks on my pc, a 256mb and a 128mb.
Strangely when I boot up the bios only recognises each
stick as half of its total size, and i am running at half
the ram i have in the machine. The same is true when i
enter the setup utility for my nvidia graphics card, 32mb
reported in use instead of 64mb.

Its a pretty old intel chipset and a celeron 500
processor. the ram is 133mhz and im pretty sure its the
right type for the pc. There are three ram slots on the
motherboard but im only using two.

i imagine its a jumper thing, but it would be great if i
could click a bios option and have double the RAM!

Many Thanks in advance for any help.

John Kenchington
 
John said:
Hello,

I have two RAM sticks on my pc, a 256mb and a 128mb.
Strangely when I boot up the bios only recognises each
stick as half of its total size, and i am running at half
the ram i have in the machine. The same is true when i
enter the setup utility for my nvidia graphics card, 32mb
reported in use instead of 64mb.

Its a pretty old intel chipset and a celeron 500
processor. the ram is 133mhz and im pretty sure its the
right type for the pc. There are three ram slots on the
motherboard but im only using two.
Click to expand...

Tell us more about your RAM and mainboard:
What's the make and model of your mainboard?
What is its chipset, if you know it?
Do your RAM modules have chips on both sides
or just on one side?.
Please post any identifying info you have about the
RAM modules such as model numbers and or the
numbers on the chips.

-- Bob Day
http://bobday.vze.com
 
You may find an old BIOS flash floating around the net
that may allow your system to use more than it's showing.

Some of the old Manufacturer Specific PC's were locked to
a certain size ram, which created a dependancy on them if
you wanted to upgrade the RAM in your system!

My suggestion is not to run with mismatched (different
sized) sticks of RAM. even in the old days of PC100 &
PC133 RAM (not really that long ago, but still the old
days!) it was never really good (in my experience) to run
a machine with different size sticks (created strang
unfindable errors!) You may find that the BIOS will only
recognise 128 sticks and that it will only go up to 384
(seen on some old machines) or if you place 128 in the
first dim and 256 in the second, then the machine will
see 384, but if you were to reverse the order your
machine may not see the 128 and only the 256.

A thing to check is that you havn't mismatched the speed
of the RAM, PC100 and PC133, if this is the case: then
put the PC100 first (IE: in bank0) and the PC133 second
(IE: in bank1) you can't put a PC100 in bank2 after that.

The same thing used to happen on the old Dell Machines!
 
Hello,

Ok, the chipset is Intel 440BX/ZX rev 3
BIOS type Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
Super I/O ALi M5133 rev 0 found at port 3F0h.

The RAM sticks are quite different appearence wise but
only have chips on the one side.

They are cheap and non-descript, but say 133hz on them,
this seems to be the only real piece of useful
information on them, the rest is serial codes etc.

Many Thanks,


John Kenchington
 
Also, just to mention, ive tried using the sticks on
their own, and they still come up at half their size, so
I dont think its a problem with the sticks conflicting
with each other.

Thanks, John
 
Also, just to mention, ive tried using the sticks on
their own, and they still come up at half their size, so
I dont think its a problem with the sticks conflicting
with each other.
Click to expand...

I was just about to ask that question. I tend to think
that the problem is not with the RAM. Maybe update
the BIOS as "Zagan" suggested?

-- Bob Day
 
How many chips on the RAM modules? It sounds like your motherboard is not
capable of using "stacked" modules...


--
Tumppi
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