ram question

[talmage at somtel.com]

Hi Greg,

A couple more things you can try.

Pass the mem= 512M argument to the kernel to try and force the issue.  This 
is a kernel argument, not specific to grub, lilo, loadlin, etc.

You may have tried this , but if you did I missed it, try just the two 
128MB memory to see what you get.
Some motherboards, especially the older ones, can be fussy about not only 
mixing memory speed, but also different makes as well, and as someone has 
already pointed out meaybe you have a bad 128 board.

Finally, if all else has failed, when you have your sighted assistance, try 
manually setting the mem speed in bios all to the speed of the slowest, and 
perhaps even increasing wait cycles.

Dave

At 12:57 AM 3/23/2004, you wrote:
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>I'm using lilo on this box. I'll have to get a sightling here to let
>me know what the bios says about the amount of ram during
>POST. However ... I decided to get into bios, hook up my blazer to the
>parallel port, and wouldn't you know it, the print screen key thing
>works. Navigation isn't easy, but it is doable if you listen
>carefully, and have heard the options in the bios read to you before,
>so you know what you should expect to hear and when. Anyway, I
>believe in standard CMOS setup, it shows the total amount of extended
>ram in the system, and that's reading 384, so I know the problem isn't
>OS-specific. I've also looked for a memory interleave option, but
>didn't find one.
>
>I then called up a friend who has the same identical board in his
>system, and he confirmed that there is no memory interleave option
>anywhere in the bios. He also took out his copy of the motherboard
>manual which is again identical to mine. He confirmed that the system
>can in fact take up to 768M of ram, in 3 dim sockets, with each socket
>being able of supporting up to 256M memory modules. It didn't say
>anything specific about memory placement on the board, just how much
>memory the board could take, and the module size supported per dimm
>socket.
>
>Then, I tested the 2 128 modules and the 1 256 modules separately, and
>the system recognizes the correct size for each of them when installed
>alone. After that, I tried all 3 combinations of installing the
>modules:
>
>combination a, 128, 128, 256.
>
>b, 128, 256, 128.
>
>c, 256, 128, 128.
>
>All of these only recognized 383M of ram.
>
>I'm out of ideas at this point. Thanks for the help and suggestions so
>far.
>
>Greg
>
>
>On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 09:44:43PM -0500, Doug Sutherland wrote:
> > Check the BIOS POST memory counter and make sure that all of the RAM
> > is showing up in that test. Sometimes the BIOS is set to enable quick
> > boot (which skips the memory test), so you may need to turn off that
> > quick boot to enable POST test. Unfortunately no speech for these.
> >
> > If you are using grub, by default grub passes a mem= parameter to the
> > kernel and sometimes gets it wrong. You can disable grub's doing this
> > and let the kernel decide how much memory you have by adding the
> > --no-mem-option flag in the kernel entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst
> >
> > kernel --no-mem-option /boot/kernel root=/dev/hdXX
> >
> > You don't need the high mem support in the kernel, that's for mem
> > over 2GB I think (or something like that). It definitely works with
> > 512MB without it turned on.
> >
> > You might consider swapping those 128MB DIMMs in one at a time to
> > see if they both are working.
> >
> > Sometimes programs like lm_sensors will see a RAM module but the
> > system will not. I recently bought a 512MB SO-DIMM and only 256MB
> > was showing up. The smbus type stuff in both windows and linux
> > said it was a 512MB SO-DIMM but it was defective, only half of
> > the RAM was working. Had it replaced and the new one worked fine.
> > One of your DIMMs might be bad.
> >
> > Also, as suggested, read your motherboard manual, sometimes there
> > are rules about which banks can be used and in which order etc.
> >
> >   -- Doug
> >
> >
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