> Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 01:39:03 -0700
> From: Howie S <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> on 9/29/02 1:12 AM, Csaba at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>> And how do I find out whether I have EDO or FPM ?
>
> I think Gauge Pro, or TechTool Pro etc. may indicate RAM types to some
> extent, I forget, but the point is that EDO is treated as FPM in an
> S900. So
> it's no biggie whether it's EDO because the S900 doesn't take
> advantage of
> EDO, and just thinks it's FPM anyway. I've had a mix in my S900 for
> years
> and it's never hiccuped as a result of that mix.
>
> I say as long as the RAM is good, and tests out, don't give it a second
> thought. If you have matching pairs you can interleave those pairs and
> get a
> small performance increase as a bonus.
>
> -Howie
>
Gauge Pro gives a lot of info and can be used for ram testing but type
of ram is not something it can do. I'd be surprised if Tech Tool Pro
can tell you if your ram is FPM or EDO. It takes really expensive
equipment for these tests bummer :-( However there is a website that
can help you figure this out by reading the numbers on your ram chips!
It's at
http://www.chipmunk.nl/DRAM/DRAM.htm
The newer cheap chips I have don't have numbers that can be decoded at
this site but they are nicely labeled so doesn't really matter.
Something that more then one person has noticed . Faster G3/4 cpu's
seem to have more issues with ram and also OSX seems to have more
issues with ram. It seems that ram that is border line in specs or
starting to fail causes problems in machines upgraded to over say 300
-350 MHZ CPU . OSX 10.2.1 is also seeing ram problems that older OS's
don't. In my case for example. I've been running a mix of ram old and
new and a couple of FPM chips the rest EDO. No problems at all in OS
9.x. After upgrading to OS 10.2.1 I had all kinds of odd problems. I
ended up buying a new hard drive after updating the firmware on my
Sonnet/Acard ATA66 card and endless other things getting no where. This
took up a lot of time as many of us who have had trouble know. I
finally did some ram testing and was able to tell I had at least one
bad chip maybe 2. I didn't think it was a ram issue because OS 9 didn't
show any problems. So this really drove me nuts. I am lucky that there
is a ram company in town with one of the expensive testing machines.
They charge $3.00 per chip to test ram and can give you all the specs
on it.They also marked the chips for future reference. If you buy
something the testing is free. Their prices are a bit higher then the
really cheap places but well worth it for the services they provide.So
I bought one ram chip to interleave with one chip that I didn't have a
match for and the testing was free.They tested 12 ram chips for me. It
turned out that all my ram was good but I had 3 fast page chips which I
had been interleaving with EDO chips. While it wasn't a problem before
it suddenly was with 10.2.1 very odd. So anyway I am now per their
recommendations interleaving EDO and fastpage separately but not
mixing them and took out an old FPM 70 ns chip that didn't match any
other I had. All is now well. The fpm chips weren't marked so I didn't
know I had been interleaving them with EDO . My machine seems to see
much more of an advantage from interleaving then I would expect. Gauge
Pro shows moving memory and when interleaved my J700 runs at apox 58
-59 but only 41 when not interleaved. This isn't just a spec which
means nothing I can see and feel the difference and Macbench tests also
show a major difference when ram is interleaved.
I now agree that EDO and FPM is pretty much a non issue in the
J700/S900 machines. It is much more important to buy ram from a place
that will exchange it if bad then weather is is EDO or FPM. However the
ram being sold today is much different then what was available just a
couple of years ago.
The C500/600 is another issue altogether and EDO is likely still the
way to go if you want to fill both slots with 64mb chips. However your
milage may vary as they say.
I'm really happy to have a machine that works again. Will S
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