ECC pc133 memory question....

[rubberman]

i bought a stick of 512mb ecc pc133 memory for an older computer. the computer will no recognize it. I even went into the bios and tried the 'ECC checking' to disabled and still doesnt matter. I went to the motherboard support website and it says it will accept ecc if i disable it in bios but for me it doesnt work. anyother ideas and options?

[rallynavvie]

I know some of the old boards that used ECC/reg memory were very finicky about matching sticks. Unless they're the exact same part # you may get some issues with multiple sticks playing nicely together. Have you tried removing the other sticks and running this one alone?

[rubberman]

yes the computer wont boot with this ecc memory

[Nelson37]

Do you mean to say that it won't boot with that stick and ONLY that stick in the PC?

How many chips on this stick and are they on both sides? Describe the sticks that work in the same manner.

With Pc's that old, they were often very, very picky about RAM configuration. There is also the possibility that the stick you bought is simply dead.

Questionable whether it was worth the investment for a computer that aged, though I happen to be sitting on a bucnch of similar RAM myself. Came with an old Xeon server I got for free. Cut out the back of the Xr PCI-e slot and put in an overclocked Nvideo 8400 card, use it to play networked games with my 12-year-old.

[johns0]

Make sure your mb accepts ram at 512mb,most older mb accept only 256mb of sdram max and some only accept 128mb.

[redwudz]

Have you tried running CPU-Z on the working sticks? That may give you a bit more info, though not sure with a older PC. http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

And, as mentioned, some PCs won't work with double sided RAM or higher chip count RAM than the original. Or also mentioned, sometimes larger RAM sizes.

I have been lucky a few times to scrounge around old computers and pick up a few sticks of older RAM for use on older PCs. It's getting very hard to find and often costs more than newer RAM because of the scarcity.

[El Heggunte]

Also, certain motherboards do not accept the "generic" type of memory sticks,
only the ones from "well-known" brands (Kingston, Samsung, etc.)

[UpperCanada]

I'am Going To Do Same On My Old Asus P3V4X
Adding 2-512mb Sticks. Want To Try And Run
Win-7 On It Just To See If I Can Make It Run.

Back In The Day I Got A Pentium 233mmx With
256mb Ram To Run Surprisingly Well On Win-XP


Anyway Good Luck With Your Project

[rallynavvie]

Questionable whether it was worth the investment for a computer that aged, though I happen to be sitting on a bucnch of similar RAM myself. Came with an old Xeon server I got for free. Cut out the back of the Xr PCI-e slot and put in an overclocked Nvideo 8400 card, use it to play networked games with my 12-year-old.

By "similar RAM" you mean ECC/reg, right? SDRAM is pretty old stuff, well before the PCI-E age.

My Tyan 2460 was really finicky about its memory. It had a 512MB stick of Crucial PC2100 ECC/reg and I tried to add a Kingston chip and they would not work together. Each worked alone, but it wouldn't even POST with both installed. Ended up returning the Kingston and getting a better price on a used matched pair of Mushkin which worked fine. In fact the Muskin sticks were able to play well with the Crucial ones so they were probably using the same logic chips.

Which is actually a good way to check the odds of compatibility. Look at the actual memory chips and compare part #s on the chips to your existing sticks. If they match then it probably won't matter which brand they are, there are really only so many places that make the actual memory chips that go on the PCB. I used to keep up with these but I haven't since the days of my beloved Winbond BH-6

[bevills1]

Go to Crucial or other memory site and enter the model number for your PC or mobo to find memory type required for your system to verify you have correct memory type. High density RAM is a little cheaper and works on some systems while low density RAM costs a bit more but is more compatible, and some systems require low density RAM to work. Your system might require low density RAM in which case it won't work if the RAM you have is high density.

[Nelson37]

Yes, got 4 Gb of ECC ram in this old server. Ungodly fan noise on this thing, and that's after taking out one of the huge, 5-pin fans. Won't run without one of them connected, they were actually installed two in series.

Monstrous case, Tyan board, price was attractive. Undocumented jumper for SATA connection.

ECC boards just plain picky about what RAM they will accept.