Geek to the Bone.
Apr. 16th, 2006 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupThere should be a song with the same name as this post's title, but then again, it would sort-of have to have one stanza in Klingon, wouldn't it?
Anyway, I got my machine all back together. It took longer than planned because I came across a stick of RAM in my desk when I was searching for something else. It reminded me of how I had blown up my last motherboard, and I decided to be brave and continue that investigation with this one.
You see, I bought one 512MB DDR266 and one 256MB DDR266 Dimm something like 8 months ago (I suppose I could grep my LJ to find out exactly when, but I can't be bothered now). When I got them home I discovered that one of the boxes was labelled DDR333. No problem, I figured. I put them into my MB with the 256MB Dimm that was already there, for a total of 1GB.
Anyway, it turns out that Windows or my motherboard or something was unstable at that RAM total. I'd keep getting blue screens after 20 minutes or so of being up. I tried just about every permutation of the 3 Dimms in my 3 slots, including leaving out one stick or another. Every permutaion with LESS than 1GB worked, and none of the 6 permutations with all the RAM worked. So, I took out the oldest stick, and stuck in my desk drawer, and I went with 768MB.
Late last October, I was rebuilding Webigail, our web/mail server which was severely borked due to a fried hard disk. Since we had it open anyway, I figured I'd find the spare stick of DDR333 which I vaguely recalled having, and put that in. I found lots of RAM including the old stick of DDR266, but no DDR333.
I (rightfully, it now turns out) deduced that I must have left it in my desktop machine. I opened it up, took out the RAM, and discovered that it was all labelled DDR333. Puzzled, I put it back in but accidentally put one stick in upside down.
Now, I know that's NOT supposed to be possible, but take it from me, it is. I have lots to say about the design of Dimm slots, and none of it is nice. This was reinforced by the hour I just spent repeatedly removing and inserting Dimms until they were all in and all registering. Having one in correctly and NOT registering is also not supposed to be possible, but I find it happens as often as not with me.
Anyway, the upshot was I fried my motherboard (although not the RAM) and was without a computer for the first week of November, which really put a cramp in my attempt at Nanowrimo.
This time, no such problems. I eventually (due to the help of a bit of software that reads Dimm module settings) discovered that the stick of RAM that was labelled 256MB DDR266 was, in fact, the long lost DDR333. I also determined that my 512MB DDR266 was, indeed, DDR266 so I wasn't getting any speed boost from having one higher-quality stick.
I did fiddle around to see if my machine would be happy with 1GB of RAM, but I didn't get it to register 1GB on my first 2 attempts and I decided to give it a miss, since I figure Webigail would be much better off going from 256MB to 512MB than my desktop machine will be going from 768MB to 1GB.
Anyhow, I'm about to open up the server and install the now found stick of DDR333. With any luck at all, it'll be back up in 15 minutes.
Anyway, I got my machine all back together. It took longer than planned because I came across a stick of RAM in my desk when I was searching for something else. It reminded me of how I had blown up my last motherboard, and I decided to be brave and continue that investigation with this one.
You see, I bought one 512MB DDR266 and one 256MB DDR266 Dimm something like 8 months ago (I suppose I could grep my LJ to find out exactly when, but I can't be bothered now). When I got them home I discovered that one of the boxes was labelled DDR333. No problem, I figured. I put them into my MB with the 256MB Dimm that was already there, for a total of 1GB.
Anyway, it turns out that Windows or my motherboard or something was unstable at that RAM total. I'd keep getting blue screens after 20 minutes or so of being up. I tried just about every permutation of the 3 Dimms in my 3 slots, including leaving out one stick or another. Every permutaion with LESS than 1GB worked, and none of the 6 permutations with all the RAM worked. So, I took out the oldest stick, and stuck in my desk drawer, and I went with 768MB.
Late last October, I was rebuilding Webigail, our web/mail server which was severely borked due to a fried hard disk. Since we had it open anyway, I figured I'd find the spare stick of DDR333 which I vaguely recalled having, and put that in. I found lots of RAM including the old stick of DDR266, but no DDR333.
I (rightfully, it now turns out) deduced that I must have left it in my desktop machine. I opened it up, took out the RAM, and discovered that it was all labelled DDR333. Puzzled, I put it back in but accidentally put one stick in upside down.
Now, I know that's NOT supposed to be possible, but take it from me, it is. I have lots to say about the design of Dimm slots, and none of it is nice. This was reinforced by the hour I just spent repeatedly removing and inserting Dimms until they were all in and all registering. Having one in correctly and NOT registering is also not supposed to be possible, but I find it happens as often as not with me.
Anyway, the upshot was I fried my motherboard (although not the RAM) and was without a computer for the first week of November, which really put a cramp in my attempt at Nanowrimo.
This time, no such problems. I eventually (due to the help of a bit of software that reads Dimm module settings) discovered that the stick of RAM that was labelled 256MB DDR266 was, in fact, the long lost DDR333. I also determined that my 512MB DDR266 was, indeed, DDR266 so I wasn't getting any speed boost from having one higher-quality stick.
I did fiddle around to see if my machine would be happy with 1GB of RAM, but I didn't get it to register 1GB on my first 2 attempts and I decided to give it a miss, since I figure Webigail would be much better off going from 256MB to 512MB than my desktop machine will be going from 768MB to 1GB.
Anyhow, I'm about to open up the server and install the now found stick of DDR333. With any luck at all, it'll be back up in 15 minutes.
