First post, by AjaxIronside
Hello!
Firstly, I'm sorry if I'm making posts too quickly back-to-back. Y'all were so helpful with the video issue I was coming across yesterday and today, and now that that is solved I'm ready to try to tackle the second hurdle.
The PS/Valuepoint 433SX/D that I'm working on came with a single stick of 4MB RAM that I would like to upgrade. It has the number THM361020ASG-70 on it, which I am to understand is: Toshiba 4MB SIMM DRAM Memory THM361020ASG-70 80ns 72-pin.
What I have purchased is three sticks of IBM 4MB, 1Mx36 RAM Module 11D1360BA-70 SIMM Parity Memory 72-pin 11E1360BA 70ns. From what I can tell, these sticks should function identically to the one that is already in my computer. I have tried:
- Using all four of the sticks (the new three and the existing one) at once
- Using just the three new ones
- Using just one of the new ones (I tried all three, one at a time) with the other three slots empty
- Using two of the new sticks at a time
- Using one old stick and one new stick
What I know about this computer is:
- It is designed to only need one stick of RAM, so having just one in there should not be a problem. It works just fine (but without enough RAM to do much other than run Windows or play Wolfenstein 3d) with the single 4MB stick installed.
With any of the above variants, the exact same things happen:
- At the POST screen the computer attempts to check the RAM, and it only gets to 3900-ish KB (which is normal)
- Two beeps, memory error (201) and memory size error (164) (this is expected, I did switch the RAM after all)
- Go into setup and it shows 16000KB under "memory." I cannot change this number, and it's certainly inaccurate - it is exactly 16000kb for every combination I listed above.
- Trying to save and exit reboots, gives me the error again, but boots back into DOS. But I only have 4MB of ram available to me no matter how many sticks or what combination are in there.
I did a lot of Googling and the only thing that I've seen to try other than cleaning, reseating, changing configurations, etc. was to take out the CMOS battery for a short period and unplug the computer to make sure no old settings lingered. I tried that but all I got were the same issues but also no improvement.
It could be that after all this time all three of the sticks I bought are dead - but considering the computer does boot with each of them (just with the above issues) that doesn't seem like the case? Also for all three of them to have degraded in the exact same way also seems strange to me? But what do I know?
Attaching photos for reference. Any help at all is greatly appreciated! Thanks so much.