Today's retro activity for me: battling a cantankerous Super Socket 7 PC. Was getting random crashes, BSODs & file read errors to the point where it would no longer boot any OS. When I took it apart to check all the connections and subsequently put it back together, my suspicions were suddenly confirmed when the RAM jumped up from 96MB to 160MB. Yep, this board didn't like the installed RAM chips at all and would flake out once the system had been switched on for a while.
I initially thought I had 3x 32MB RAM SIMMS installed, but it turns out 2 of them were single-sided 256MB sticks that were being recognised as 32MB initially before suddenly springing to life as 64MB chips. I have no idea where the hell I got those stick from in my collection, but the majority of my systems do not support them properly.
So I replaced all the RAM chips with 2 regular PC100 64MB SIMMS and finally the system had stability. I ran 3DMark several times just to confirm - this plain wouldn't work with the dodgy RAM installed.
As for those 256MB sticks, I put them into another PC where they are recognised as 64MB sticks. They seem to work fine at that capacity in their new home, so they'll suffice until I find another system in my collection that will support them properly.
I had to steal some RAM from my Power Macintosh G3 Beige Desktop, replacing one of it's 64MB sticks with the spare 32MB. Good job I did really, as when I tested the G3 it wouldn't boot to Mac OS due to a dead PRAM battery (tested with my multimeter), so I'll have to order a replacement.
Also played around with the jumpers on another Socket 7 board, to try and maximise the clock of the installed AMD K6-2 400 CPU. Managed to get it to 210MHz at 60MHz bus. The highest it would go is 300MHz at 50MHz bus, but the system wasn't stable.