[ltp] Thinkpad 600 and maximising RAM with success

[Daniel Schmidt]

Hi Wes,

On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 09:46:22AM -0600, wes schreiner wrote:
> Daniel Schmidt wrote:
> 
> >as Notebook S0-Dimms (SDRAM) are quite cheap at the moment, i tried to upgrade my Thinkpad 600 (2645-510) from 224 MB to 288MB, which is the maximum of RAM for that model.
> 
> 32MB.  I swapped the 32MB PC-66 with a 64MB PC-100 SODIMM that came out 
> of a newer Thinkpad to get 160MB and all was well.  Recently I bought 
> two generic 128MB PC-100 modules.  When I installed them the initial 
> screen would show 288MB but the computer would freeze at that point, so 
> I put the old modules back in.  When I read Daniel's message about one 

My thinkpad was running stable, whenever it was able to boot. The only
issue was that the ram size did not show up right. No freezes using W2K,
Knoppix Linux and Debian Woody.

> slot needing to be PC-66 I tried swapping the 64MB PC-100 with one of 
> the new 128MB PC-100 modules.  This time it booted, but Linux soon 
> oopsed!  I rebooted with a memtest-86 floppy and sure enough, got many 
> errors starting at the 32MB point.  I swapped the 128MB PC-100 for the 
> other 128 MB PC-100 module I had, but same story.  I put the 64MB PC-100 
> module back in and now memtest-86 reports no errors.  The working 64MB 
> PC-100 SODIMM is marked as being CL-2, and I bet that the generic 128MB 
> modules are CL-3 and that's why they fail the memory tests.

My modules are all CL-2, even the PC100 ones. Another interesting point
is, that my thinkpad runs ok when using the oparating system, but the
BIOS Mem Test seems to fail when using 2 128MB extension modules. It
takes so long for the test, that i at last interrupt it by switching off.

> Moral of the story:  Not all memory is created equal, so ALWAYS run 
> memtest-86 after changing memory.

Hm. Perhaps i should look after memtest-86...

Read you,

-ds-

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