Little help...

I'll make it quick. What could I use to clean my RAM slots? Sometimes when I reset it doesn't count up to 440 like it should. I think maybe the contacts are dirty as there's quite a bit of dust. Would a 50/50 water/alcohol solution do the trick or...? Thanks.
Yeah, that's what I feared. I just bought it too. $10 for 256 after rebates. I thought I'd try everything else before I accept that it's a dud. Are there any other ways to tell if it's the chip or not? Seemed to work fine for a while, and it counts up perfectly when I first turn on the machine. It's only when I do a hard reset using the reset button that it doesn't count up all the way. I had this problem before on my last machine too. And this may be a stupid question, but does slot order matter? I have a 256, a 128, and a 64. I've heard before it has to be in a decreasing order if they aren't all the same. Not sure if there was any truth to that though.


Staff member
well, in that setup, there's a good chance that the ram has problems with one of the other sticks. try running it without the 64 meg one, then without the 128 meg one for a while. I got 2 64 meg sticks laying around that worked great on their own, but if they're together in the same machine, it's bluescreen ####.


Staff member
Slot order can definitely matter; when working at high frequencies like 100+MHz, an inch of signal path can mean the difference between a device working great and completely screwing up (fun fact: in one nanosecond, light travels a distance of about a foot). One of your sticks might not be able to tolerate the extra delay, particularly if you're using aggressive CAS/RAS delay settings.

edit: if you want to try really hammering your RAM, you might be interested in Memtest86, a freeware RAM test utility that goes through a ton of tests to catch errors that typical BIOS tests can miss.

(Edited by ExCyber at 12:23 pm on Dec. 5, 2001)