difficulty installing 5.3-R i386 - how to check RAM

[Gabrielle Harrison & Paul van den Bergen]

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 21:02:27 -0500, Kevin Kinsey <kdk at daleco.biz> wrote:

> Gabrielle Harrison & Paul van den Bergen wrote:
>
>> OK, thanks for the info... now for the solution...
>>
>> I have more than 16 MB of ram available but it does nto seem to
>> play well  together or there is a problem with some of the chips.
>>
>> How do I trouble shoot my RAM chips?  for instance, if I swap the
>> 2 SIMMs  I have in there atm it does not want to do the POST.  is
>> POST success  sufficient to conclude that the chips are OK? is there a  
>> BSD utility to  check or diagnose RAM condition or errors?
>>
>> (ahhh the joys of old hardware...)
>>
>
> *g*, Yeah.  I've got piles of it.  Some of them are
> my primary DNS/web machines, :-p
>
> As to the question -- Hmm, what should I say?

yeah... which turned out to be my saviour... I dug out an old pile of  
MBs... which still had there mem chips intact, now have 98 MB in the  
machine, loading happily as I typo...


> (1st, a parenthetical observation --- the FBSD list doesn't like
> "top posting" much, and you forgot to cc: the list: many people
> request that you keep all this discussion _on_ the list for a couple
> of reasons.  However, you're probably new to all this; consider
> forgiveness extended, but try to play nicer next time? Nothing
> personal, you understand ... just a "heads up" for the future....)

No problems, thanks for the headsup... Not intentional, just used to lists  
that do auto-reply-to as default... :-) but I guess this is flame war  
material here...  personally I have found top posting more useable as I  
tend to scan the email top first to see if I want to read... I can see the  
point though, in-line or bottom post presumably being prefered for some  
reason ;-) guess it's a style thing, one that I'm not fussed by, so I'll  
tow the line...


>
> The standard answer for "RAM issues" is to download the
> program "memtest86", which is available for most any
> computing platform.  (e.g., it's OS independent once
> you create the floppy disk).  Running this program will create
> a bootable floppy disk that you stick in the box, boot
> into, and it runs tests all day long until you shut it down.
>
> I believe you want http://www.memtest.org
>
> IIRC, you may be able to get a log/report from it, so
> you don't have to sit there through $n iterations of
> the test and watch the screen for errors, but YMMV.
>
> As for mixing chips, it's been a long, long time, and I
> was more like a "hobbyist" then (maybe still am), but
> I do seem to remember it was a "no no" to mix EDO
> and FP chips, or some such, blah blah....
>
> HTH,
>
> Kevin Kinsey

ta!  that looks just what I want...  Knowing the hardware is fine goes a  
long way to solving bugs ;-)


-- 
   ########## Paul van den Bergen,
####       # Gabrielle Harrison
#  #       # & Anja van den Bergen
#  ####    # 848 High Street Rd
####  #    # Glen Waverley VIC 3150 Australia
   #   ###### gabpaul at melbpc.org.au
   #   #      ph: +613 9886 3160
   #####      mob: 042 886 3160