🚀 go-pugleaf

In article: <816018081snz@wookie.demon.co.uk>  John Beardmore 
<wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> writes:
> 
> In article <754853600wnr@stuffing.demon.co.uk>
>            neil@stuffing.demon.co.uk "Neil Matthews" writes:
> 
> >System is 486 dx2/66, Award BIOS, VLB, CD-ROM, SBPro, 2*420Mb HD, 
> >Avance Logic video, DTC 2278 EIDE/multi I/O card, etc.
> >Recently upgraded memory from 12Mb to 16Mb, now get frequent crashes of
> >kernel32 which lock up the machine completely. The only way out is to 
> >power down. Any suggestions as to why this might be happening?
> 
> Well, if your memory has no parity, you won't be getting any warning of
> memory problems beyond unexplained crashes !

It seems like some has, some hasn't.
The installed memory is as follows:

4 * 1Mb 30 pin SIMMS 3-chip (2 * 51C4400, 1 * 51C4100 CJB7) 
(I assume that's 4bit+4bit+1bit @ 70ns)
1 * 4Mb 72 pin SIMM (8 chip, 60ns, no parity?)
1 * 8Mb 72 pin SIMM (NEC, 16 * 424400-70L, 8 * 421000-70L)
(Again, I assume 4bit+4bit+1bit @ 70ns)

Is parity checking one of those things the bios does automagically?
Will it try even if some of the mem is n/p?

> I'd accept the hit of some downtime and do some serious memory checks.

What do you suggest? 
 
> If you are certain that the other simms are OK, you could pull them out
> to speed things up,

I guess you mean "speed up the memory checking". 

> but if the problem has any contribution from things
> like bus loading, that may give you a false positive...

Ain't life a bitch!
 
> Does adding an extra wait state in your bios config help ?

My Award bios has a setting for dram speed - the options are slowest, 
slower, faster, fastest. The default is faster. Any idea what these refer 
to in real access time?  (I've set it to slower to see what happens.) 
Default wait-state is 1, left it at that for now.

> Did you get the right type of RAM ?

Is there a wrong type? (see above)

The new 8Mb has replace a 4Mb of the same type as the one still in use, 
which seemed to work ok.  

Thanks for your time.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neil Matthews                 "Out, but not down!"
Birmingham, UK.               neil@stuffing.demon.co.uk