luckybob wrote:if you need/want some edo dimms, let me know. I have a box full of the smaller ones.
Smaller than 64 MB, which is the lowest density I'd want to bother with in a 9600? Heck, if I could get a full set of twelve 128 MB DIMMs, that'd max it out nicely, but the cost is rather impractical compared to just using my MDD, which is also much, much more stable in general.
Even after plucking out the bad DIMM and even a good DIMM to bring it down to 128 MB interleaved, I still can't do things like add an IDE hard drive as a slave to the DVD drive that's already in there, which still locks up the machine while it's searching for System Folders to boot from. Or, for that matter, copy over files to my FireWire drive enclosure without suddenly halting midway, which is quite obvious when said enclosure's drive activity light isn't lit. Mouse still moves around, but nothing else's happening and pressing the power button on the front won't shut it off. Gotta pull the plug.
This must be what owning some vintage exotic European sports car is like: wicked fast, but also nowhere near reliable enough to use as a daily driver.
I would run 192 MB non-interleaved, but the performance penalty for doing so is fairly significant. I suppose further testing will reveal if that's what I ultimately have to do in order to make this 9600 stable.
That said, smaller DIMMs of the FPM variety would've come in handy if I had bothered to take home some of those DOS compatibility cards back at VCFSE, but I had already hauled enough hardware home and spent too much money as it was. (Note to prospective VCF attendees: save up a few hundred bucks beforehand, you just might need it!)
UPDATE: No improvement in stability with the 128 MB interleaved setup, I'm afraid. This thing still has a tendency to freeze and crash at random, including during the startup process. I'm going 192 MB non-interleaved for now, eating the performance penalty and seeing what happens.