The memory arrived today, I remove the old 4meg simms, attempt to fit these 16meg modules and they wont fit! I google "how to install 30 or 72 pin simms" and they say to install at 45 degrees, I put my old 1meg simm back in and it slots straight in, something is not right.
Not right alright, the 16meg simms are about 1mm too wide to fit in the slot! I grab a chainsaw file as thats the only suitable tool I have on hand and decide to file away the opposite side that does'nt have the notch, one by one and a bit of trial and error and they are all seated in place.
I plug the computer in and turn it on, long and low beeeeeepp, followed by two quick beeps, no screen, I assume something is not right with the ram, for the next hour and a half I remove, refile,clean and reinstall the simms to no avail, I reinstall the 1meg simms and I get the same sounds, WTF is going on?
I look at my plasma TV and it suddenly occurs to me, my input label "Computer" is for hdmi1, I then select "pc" and the screens shows the usual cmos battery error, wait just a minute I figure, maybe the ram does work I just had it on the wrong bloody input!!!!!
Reinstall the 16meg simms, boot it on, and it works!!! , that long beep is the ram test and once it hits about the first 10meg its one long continous beep all the way until 065280kb is tested, which takes a few seconds, I log into the bios to redetect the hard disk and boot into dos, testing himem memory takes about 30 seconds now........ Total memory is 65,536k, 64,857k free
So their you go, you can run 64meg in a 386, hell I dont see why I could'nt add another 64meg, the downside would be himem taking 60 seconds to test the memory.