GunKneeNeon wrote on 2023-07-11, 11:44:
[...]
Sorry for not making sense. I should've said I have two of them each, the picture posted earlier is intended to show the difference. They are all 2-sided 72pin 16mb EDO rams.
I strongly doubt that. 16MB SIMMs have an odd power of 2 chips onboard, so 2 64Mb chips or 8 16Mb chips.
Even with a good pic I can't figure out what chips those things with "4MX3E2K5DJ-6DD" are - "4M" or "4MX" isn't any regular vendor code.
But the Alliance chips are clear enough and they are 4Mb chips, not 16Mb, so those 8 chips visible in the pic amount to 4MB. If there are 8 more of the same type on the back, that's an 8MB SIMM, not a 16MB SIMM.
(note capitalization - when discussing memory it's vital to keep bits and Bytes clear and separate)
I don't know the exact model number of my original ram, but they work.
When inserted in pairs, the BIOS recognizes them as 32mb in total.
That suggests that they are 16MB SIMMs. With the ununsual number of chips, I would assume that they are parity SIMMs. That may be important later on...
The Alliance won't be recognized by the machine, when inserted(forcefully) in pairs there are repeated beeps, no video.
Two options:
1) the SIMMs are dead.
2) the SIMMs can't support memory settings on the board.
(I'm ruling out 3 - they are obscure non-standard SIMMs, as unlike the unknown ones they are completely bog-standard 4MB/8MB non-parity units)
Note the difference in parity: if you have parity check enabled, those SIMMs with Alliance chips won't work. If they work in another system but not here, that would be my first suspicion. Boot with the working SIMMs, check if parity is enabled in BIOS. If so, disable it and you might find the SIMMs with Alliance chips suddenly do work.
The interesting part is when I pair these two different rams, the BIOS recognizes only my original one. The total amount of ram is 16mb. Then throw a "memory test failed" error.
The SIMMs are of different size and configuration, that is never going to work.
They have almost the same size with only about 0.2mm difference. Note the round opening in middle of the connecting fingers.
size1.jpg
size2.jpg
Not convinced that difference is real - it looks like the second SIMM is shifted to the left in its entirety (see left edge) rather than any difference in the key slot.