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Memory not working together but works individually

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First post, by deleted_acc

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Hello I am trying to upgrade my retro pc with more ram. I have a P2-99 from Asus and currently have a 256mb sdram 168pin stick installed and tried to add another 256mb stick (both the installed and new are kingston) but upon install and booting up, the computer refuses to POST and does a long continuous beep with a black screen. I have checked if they are installed and seated correctly and thought maybe the motherboard had an issue so I swapped the original one into slot 2 individually and the computer works no problems and has no errors. I previously had a 512mb kit to try and upgrade but both sticks were flooded with errors in memtest and the computer then wouldn't post upon reboot. Any ideas? Thanks.

CPU is a pentium iii slot 1 @ 733mhz on a 440zx chipset

Reply 1 of 5, by alvaro84

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Have hou tried them with relaxed timings? I'm not sure of course, 133MHz isn't THAT much but one of my P3B-F boards can not do 150MHz wit 1 stick with tightest timings (140 is okah though) and the other is very picky about it, taking only a fes pairs of the many sticks I've tested at 150MHz.
Along these lines, does picking a lower FSB help?
BX/ZX wasn't designed to run at 133MHz, after all. Even if it tends to.

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 2 of 5, by Joseph_Joestar

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The 440ZX chipset is limited to 256 MB RAM total.

Archived link with specs.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 5, by deleted_acc

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alvaro84 wrote on 2021-01-30, 04:12:

Have hou tried them with relaxed timings? I'm not sure of course, 133MHz isn't THAT much but one of my P3B-F boards can not do 150MHz wit 1 stick with tightest timings (140 is okah though) and the other is very picky about it, taking only a fes pairs of the many sticks I've tested at 150MHz.
Along these lines, does picking a lower FSB help?
BX/ZX wasn't designed to run at 133MHz, after all. Even if it tends to.

I’m running 100mhz bus and 33mhz pci is it possible the memory is an unbuffered?

Reply 4 of 5, by Horun

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-01-30, 04:30:

The 440ZX chipset is limited to 256 MB RAM total.

Archived link with specs.

^^ This ! Good summary and good find, the 440ZX datasheet also says max 256MB: https://web.archive.org/web/20060218024851/ht … ts/29065001.pdf

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 5 of 5, by Errius

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Yeah, there's the problem. ZX sux.

OT: I had a similar problem with one of my machines, a server, where each individual SDRAM module worked OK, and they worked in pairs too, but putting all 4 in caused problems. Turned out to be overheating. The memory was running VERY hot. (It was mid-August). This was a devil of a problem to track down because the memory would pass the POST test, but would malfunction later, causing all sorts of apparently unrelated problems.

Is this too much voodoo?

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