2 Sep
2008
2 Sep
'08
2 p.m.
Mr Ian Primus wrote:
> "I've managed to fit one but it
doesn't work".
Heh - oops!
Hehe. I have seen older Macintosh computers that have
had memory forcefully
rammed into them.
I seem to remember someone - and I think it was Amstrad - shipped machines
with simms (pre-dimm days!) which were an incredibly tight fit into the
sockets, and the simm contacts weren't gold-plated either. Couple that with a
fair dose of heat and all sorts of interesting things used to happen.
I remember simms which used 'normal' DIL ICs too, rather than surface-mount,
and the manufacturer didn't bother to trim the legs - mechanical fouling was
common in systems which used the angled simm sockets.
I used to work at an electronics recycler. To quickly
test PC SDRAM, we
simply plugged it into a motherboard. I had this one ASUS Pentium III board
that I used to test all the RAM - and on days when we tested memory, I
would literally test hundreds of modules at a rip. Plug one in, hit the
power switch, CMOS test passed - note amount of memory it registered, turn
off the board, yank the chip and toss it in the appropriate bin, plug in
another, etc.
That board survived many thousands of inertions/removals. Eventually the
tabs on the sockets would break off, but it didn't much matter, you could
still plug and unplug the memory.
Yep, been there myself many years ago; I recall we deliberately broke the
metal tabs off the sockets to make it easier to get modules in and out
quickly. We were somewhat cavalier about anti-static precautions...
I can't really remember ever having
to _replace_ the motherboard. It always just worked.
I know back in the days when PCs were still expensive, I had at least one
which had found its way to me as junk - problem turned out to be slightly bent
contacts on one of the memory sockets.
These "memory tests" were far from
conclusive, and simply served to quickly
weed out the obvious duds and sort by capacity.
Yep. I can't remember what we used to do actual memory tests now; it may well
have been Checkit (I know we had a copy, just can't remember if it had a
memory test feature that worked properly!)
cheers
Jules