Using two RAM modules in an XE...

...and going over 1GB at the same time.

Well, i have had my problems with that.
I remember looking for everything on the software side trying to figure out those random crashes i got, whaddayasay, it was a hardware problem all along.
I removed the second 512 MB stick and NO problemes whatsoever then, rock solid OS4 and fun to work with

I've given up hope since to ever be able to put in the second stick in and work, at least for some time, with a Gig of memory...until today

See this thread over at aworld. It tells to reduce the bus speed to 100MHz instead of the given 133MHz.
(It means fiddling with jumpers [JP11, JP 12 and JP 13 on the mobo])

I tried that and am now in my first testing stage (memtester runs shows no errors, building a large project [which kept crashing 100% before i tried this workaround with 1 GB] and a special case game, which also kept crashing with 1 GB installed) NOTHING so far

I set JP 13 to 2-3 instead of 2-1
The only thing that is a LITTLE annoying is that my CPU core speed went down from 1266MHz to 950MHz (as told by UBoot) ... ah, well, one has to make sacrifices

@Raziel
I've used both 100Mhz and 133Mhz configurations, but I did not notice any performance difference on my XE 800 Mhz CPU. Most of the time I tried 2 sticks, the computer would not boot. It may have been from my memory bus speed setting, but I don't remember. I'll have to it again sometime.
Somewhere I have a box of a dozen 512MB and 1GB sticks for the AmigaOne. When I find it, I should probably sell them to other users here who need them.

@Raziel
Until my A1s (G4 933)died I ran them with 1Gb (2x512modules) no problems also with no adjusting of speed. BUT both were ecc which cost more. From memory if you are using both slots the first slot must at least contain an ecc module. Just before my A1s departed i bought 2 x 1gb modules, never got a chance to test them, I will have to give them to my brother to try in his G3.

cheers
ace

@acefnq

I just picked up two 1 GB sticks of Infiineon memory from eBay for $38 US. ECC, registered, 133. So far so good.

I ran memtester for a while, and all was OK. So far, no lockup using OWB. I guess I'll trust that it's REALLY OK after using it for a while.

Paul

@Raziel

Quote:
That's the reason why I quit trying to run it that way. I couldn't get my speed back up to 933 or 1000 with the buss set to 100 MHz.

What processor do you have?

I've got a G4, the 933 MHz rated 7455 chip. As soon as I try to go past the 8x multiplier, it acts like I've cut the multiplier in half!

I would love to put both my 512 MB modules in, but I'm not giving up my speed for it. I don't care if the buss speed is 100 or 133, but I don't like losing over 200 MHz on the core speed.

@dwolfman

I've got a G4 with 1266MHz, losing about 300 MHz here as the processor speed is reported as 950 MHz by UBoot.

That's a shame, but i'm playing with 1GB of RAM in my miggy for the first time, so it's not too bad. Maybe i'm going back to use 500MB when the speed gets feelable slower...

The only thing that went sluggish after reducing the bus speed were the I/O operations on files and harddisks when a big project were building at the same time so (JXFS here) ... so, as far as i'm concerned, i can live with that

@Raziel

Do you know if that G4 is a 7455 like mine? Curious because you can get a higher multiplier then I can. Even at 133 MHz buss speed, I can't go much higher than 1.06 GHz without the multiplier acting like it's been cut in half.

@thread

Followup:

Not so rosy here as I had hoped. I've had some failures on the "Stuck address" portion of Memtester now. Everything else passes. But not that portion. I also got a lock up trying to load a 1.8 MB file into ImageFX .

But right now, it's behaving properly again.

Paul

BTW: @dwolfman and Raziel:

My G4 is a 7441/7451 Vger. I haven't played with the bus speed/timing yet.

@dwolfman

Nope, it's a 7447/7457, upgrade from ACube performed on a broken G4 ( 7455 i think).
I can't play with the multiplier because ACube already set it to the lowest possible VCore as thest showed that it became crashy when set to something else.

Maybe i "could" set it one step higher, but i don't dare

@thread:
Further follow-up:

I ran memtester on each of the 1 GB sticks individually, and they passed with no errors. So I've put them both back in. Right now I have three OWB windows open, Abiword open with a 5 page MSWord doc. in Cygnix, notepad, a shell, and AmigaAmp running. So far no problems. I'm tempted to just run it this way anyway, even if memtester shows errors again with both in. So far it doesn't seem to be causing any trouble.

I'll try adding ImageFX to the mix after I post this.

Paul

ed: ImageFX opened a 150KB image OK.
ed: 2 I opened up another 5 MB or so of pictures in ImageFX now and all is well. (well, screen is kind of cluttered)

@Paul

I had one game i used to test RAM errors with (seems this baby allocates ALOT of memory if available before starting up)

It's Ivan 0.50, a neat little top-down RPG.

It either crashes on startup or later on when you start the game itself.
NOW it's working nicely, but when i had the two sticks in and memtester was showing error and everything else ran fine, THIS one crashed and told me that something was fishy

Hi everyone,

Why do we always get all the bad luck?

Just imagine AOS4.x FLYING with DDR1 ram and 8xAGP.




(It'd be nice to have 2 more PCI ports, too.)

@Atheist

Thats off topic, but my system IS flying with OS4.1

Forget about memtester,and just try the memory sticks and do real tests. Use it on a daily basis. If you get strange behaviour,its' most likely becuase of the memory. If everything works like a charm. Just do it