dealing with deffective RAM

[SD]

On Sunday 15 August 2004 21:31, Laurentiu Pancescu wrote:
> I was afraid this is what I'll be told, you're
> probably right.  I have two 128M modules, I'll try to
> find the faulty one, by running the tests just with
> one at a time. If it's one of them (could also be the
> processor, or the mainboard, right?), is it better to
> buy a replacement for the defective one, or just a
> single 256M module, to avoid mismatches between the
> chips?  MB is a Matsonic/Chaintech 7AJA0 (I know, it's
> cheap and not very good - that's what Compaq decided
> to put inside Presario), KT833-based, hosting an
> Athlon 1100MHz.

If 256Mb will fit in one slot instead of 2 slots with 128Mb then go for 
it. As others have stated, buy decent ram. Been there myself - add up 
your travel+time and it just isn't worth it. Fwiw, it's only once I got 
decent ram that I was able to diagnose defective L2 cache. Not that I 
want to worry you mind!

Remember that gcc and bzip are excellent torture tests. Set g++ off on 
something "heavy" and have bzip2 compress/decompress all night in 
tandem. If it's still alive in the morning, consider yourself 
reliable. ;-)