Intel al440lx board ram
 

Hi. This board originally took pc66, is there 100 or 133 etc that will work
with it? PC66 is hard to find and expensive. Thanks.

Michele Smith wrote:
Hi. This board originally took pc66, is there 100 or 133 etc that will work
with it? PC66 is hard to find and expensive. Thanks.


Hi...

It's virtually certain that you can buy whichever you find that's
most readily available at the best price and the machine will use it
just fine.

Note though, that faster than pc133 is a whole different thing, you
can't buy ddr??? and use it, can't even plug it in.

Why not see if you don't have a neighbor or friend who uses pc???
memory, borrow a stick, and try it?

If all else fails, I have a couple of sticks of pc133 here (128 and 256)
that I no longer have use for that I'd be happy to loan you one of.

Take care.

Ken

"Michele Smith" wrote in message
...
Hi. This board originally took pc66, is there 100 or 133 etc that will
work
with it? PC66 is hard to find and expensive. Thanks.



Usually PC100 will work just fine, sometimes PC133, the problems you run
into have more to do with the electrical layout of the memory than the speed
it's rated at though, particularly in the larger capacities. Your best bet
is to find one that you can try before you buy or return if it won't work.

"Michele Smith" writes:

Hi. This board originally took pc66, is there 100 or 133 etc that will work
with it? PC66 is hard to find and expensive. Thanks.

The limitation is that the memory controller on the board will only see memory
chips that are up to a certain density. For example, if you have a 256MB RAM
stick, it may have 8x256Mbit, or 4x512Mbit, or 16x128Mbit chips on it. 64Mbits
was a common limitation on older boards, meaning the biggest stick you could
put in there would be 128MB if it was the normal type with two sides and 8
chips on each side. If you put a bigger stick in there, the board would only
see part of it.

As long as you do not get bitten by the memory density, I can think of two
other issues:

- Cacheable RAM area. This only matters on boards with L2 cache external to
the CPU. Since your PII processor has L2 cache on the CPU, it does not have a
realistic cacheable area limit so you can install as much memory as the board
will take. Older TX boards could only cache 64MB of RAM, and the cacheable
range of Super 7 boards was usually limited by the amount of L2 cache
installed on the motherboard. If you installed an operating system that
loaded at the top of memory like Windows, it would possibly be out of the
cacheable area and thus run very slowly, helping to negate the benefits of
having more memory available.

- I have heard anecdotes that using e.g. PC133 memory in a PC66 motherboard
will fail because the refresh interval on the PC66 memory controller is much
longer than that on the PC133 controller. If the RAM was designed with a
shorter refresh interval in mind, the slower refresh interval may allow things
to fall out of RAM. I have not been able to corroborate this personally, but
it may be something to investigate.

In article , Ryan Underwood wrote:
"Michele Smith" writes:
- I have heard anecdotes that using e.g. PC133 memory in a PC66 motherboard
will fail because the refresh interval on the PC66 memory controller is much
longer than that on the PC133 controller. If the RAM was designed with a
shorter refresh interval in mind, the slower refresh interval may allow
things to fall out of RAM.

Another thing to watch out for is that the memory may be 5 volt, while AFIK
all 100 and 133 RAM is 3.3 volt. It's easy to tell, the SIMMs look the same,
but one of the notches is in a slightly different place.

Geoff.


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How much PC66 do you need? I have some stashed away somewhere and might be
able to give you what you need. I won't be needing it any more.

Reply to - bobkos at earthlink dot net

You know what to change in the e-ddress....


"Michele Smith" wrote in message
...
Hi. This board originally took pc66, is there 100 or 133 etc that will
work
with it? PC66 is hard to find and expensive. Thanks.