[Techtalk] Trouble with upgrading RAM

[Riccarda Cassini]

Hi Tracey, thanks again!

Tracey Clark wrote:
> Thought - in your bios, do you have any alarms that it is possible to
> turn on? If so, it's time consuming but worth trying to turn them on one
> by one, boot, and see if they go off.

haven't found anything like this. It's a rather old and dusty bios
without any fancy stuff...


> > I downloaded the datasheet PDF for my stick, but then concluded that
> > its 16-pages full of technical details is definitely more than I ever
> > wanted to know...
> 
> Most likely you'll never need all that information, unless you plan on
> going into hardware design.

that'll have to wait a little... lots of other things to learn first ;-)

> 
> > Unfortunately, that still leaves the issue unresolved for the moment.
> > Someone else suggested (off-list) that the second socket might be the
> > problem.  I guess I'll do some more testing. This will take its time,
> > though, because the crashes are only occurring sporadically.
> 
> It is worth testing the memory in another socket. However, I'd think that
> if there was a socket problem, the memory test would have shown problems
> communicating with the memory? I might be misunderstanding how that
> works, but I would think it would be inevitable.
> 
> > On the other hand, I don't have too many components in that computer -
> > it's pretty standard: 1 harddisk, CD-ROM, CD-burner, floppy, graphics
> > card, soundcard, NIC.  However, I was told that this particular version
> > of the Athlon processor is consuming a substantial amount of energy...
> > Also, I never tried to plug in some other additional component - maybe
> > that would've caused the same kind of problem(?)
> 
> *If* you were close to maxing out your power supply to the point where 1
> Watt made a difference then yes - anything else you plugged in would
> cause a problem.

After having talked to someone else at work, who independently also
brought up that power supply idea, I thought there must be something
about it...

I took heart and went off to my local computer store to ask whether I
could borrow a power supply to simply try out whether that would cure
the problem.  Seeing that guy behind the counter, I somehow had that
sixth-sense feeling that he might be a Linux geek - dont't really know
why.  So I described my problem and was sure to mumble something about
X server.  I noticed a brief glare in his eyes, and I knew I'd hit the
right keyword.  Also, I think he was more perplexed by the fact that I
was seriously considering to replace that power supply *myself*, rather
than by my unusual approach to not want to buy it right away.
After having recovered from his initial shock he was actually quite
nice and helpful.  Trying to establish some credibility, I threw in all
the buzzwords I'd learned in the last 24 hours, hoping that he wouldn't
ask any further questions about other things I've never heard of before
(I felt the thin ice cracking under my feet, but I tried to keep calm
and not let the trembling reach up to my voice).  I don't know whether
it was me being the first linux-girl he ever met, the buzzwords, or my
batting eyes at him that finally convinced him...  Anyway, he gave me a
400W power supply and lots of good advice on what to do and what not...
(yay!)

So, I just replaced it, and things are at least not worse than before. 
Time will tell...  I'll keep you posted :-)

Riccarda



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