>
> From: "David R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: ATA/66 Card Cold Start Problem Fixed
> Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2002 14:10:29 -0700
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I figured I'd report an interesting solution to a problem I have been
> having
> with my VST Ultratek ATA/66 card on the G3 s900. Some may remember that
> over the last few months I have had to do a re-start right after the
> initial
> startup in order for my machine to boot off one of the ide drives.
snip
> But then I tested this by 'Disabling' the Memory Testing. Shut down
> again,
> waited. Started up and sure enough the computer booted right up the
> first
> time.
>
> To be sure, I enabled Memory Testing again in the Control Panel. Shut
> down,
> waited. Started up and the problem re-occurs. Then I Disabled Memory
> Testing once more, Shut down, waited, and start up. Problem goes away.
>
> So it appears that for whatever reason, having Memory Testing
> Enabled/ON is
> what is causing the problem with my ide drives booting up from a cold
> start.
> So the question now is, why do I have this problem with Memory Testing
> On?
sip
> My off-the-cuff theory is that because I have 768 ram, it takes longer
> then
> it should to test the ram and by this time, the ide card & drives have
> missed the boot up process. So then the drives just hang forever
> unable to
> boot, until I restart.
>
> If anybody has any other ideas why this worked, I'd like to hear em.
> Thanks
> All!
>
> Dave
My off the cuff answer is if problems are fixed by turning memory
testing off you have at least one ram chip the machine doesn't like for
some reason. The problem will likely be more noticeable if and when you
go to OSX.
I sometimes had to do a restart for my machine to boot in OS 9 and OS
X 10.03-10.1.5. I suspected ram problems but it wasn't a big issue as
was only a problem once in a while when booting. When I installed OS X
10.2.1 suddenly I had major problems & issues. I had corrupted disk
data OSX would only boot and run one time before it was too corrupted
to run again. I bought a new hard drive upgraded the ATA card firmware
etc nothing worked. Finally I decided to test my ram again which had
always past the tests. We know however that the software ram testing is
far from perfect. I was able to tell from testing that I perhaps had
one or two bad ram chips. Finally I got tired of it and pulled all my
ram and took it and the extras I had to a local memory company. They
have one of the expensive ram testing machines and were willing to test
my ram while I waited. Well to my surprise all of my ram tested good.
However the problem was I had been interleaving FPM and EDO chips
together and I had one chip which was the old slow 70ns ram. I didn't
know this because these chips weren't marked. ( they are now!) They
recommended not using the 70ns ram chip as many machines will have
issues with it once the machine is upgraded faster then 300mhz and to
make sure when interleaving ram to not mix FPM and EDO but not a
problem to use both in the J700/S900 machines. They charge $3.00 to
test each ram chip but do it for free if you buy something . So I
bought 1 ram chip to match one I already had. It was well worth it for
me as the machine has never ran better. Interleaving the ram seems to
be well worth it on my machine. Gauge Pro shows moving memory not
interleaved 39-41 interleaved 57-61 apox. This is noticeable machine
is much snappier . Best of luck. Will S
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