[clue-tech] Bleepin' Memory

[Mike Staver]

Well, considering the P4 does not have an onboard memory controller like 
the Athlon 64 does, I would suspect your motherboard as the faulty one. 
  However, it could also be your power supply since it's not consistent. 
  If you don't have enough power to everything, the system could be 
unstable.  Hopefully you have a good power supply and not a freebie that 
came with a case.  I like these 3 brands:

Antec
Enermax
Thermaltake

There are many more good ones, but I find the best prices on the 
Thermaltake ones.  I've never had a bad Thermaltake or Enermax PS, but I 
have had about 10 total defected Antec SL model PS's, which bothers me a 
bit.  I've never had a faulty Antel True model, but the SL models leave 
a little to be desired in the quality side of things.

Now let's say you swap out your PS, and that's not it - I'd definitely 
blame the board for this one.  Even though it has an Intel chipset on it 
and not a VIA one, I'd still take a very hard look at the board.  One 
thing you'll also want to check is the system temps - are they reasonable?

Keith Hellman wrote:
> Hello all:
> 
> I'm looking for some advice on the next-best-step in a hardware
> diagnosis.
> 
> A little more than a year ago I bought a Gigabyte 865PE motherboard, a
> P4, and a 512MB DDR ram for a new machine.  It has in general performed
> well.  Of particular annoyance, however, was that I was never able to
> successfully backup to my DVDRAM drive.  Kept getting corrupt BZIP files
> that I could not fully decompress.  Oh well, I thought, my drive is
> going on the fritz (it is by now several years old) and I adopted other
> backup solutions.
> 
> A couple weeks back I'm backing up and bzip segfaults.  Amazingly, it
> regurgitates a message saying (paraphrased)
>   This is not a bzip bug.  You probably have subtle memory corruption
>   which other programs may ignore (or not even notice) but bzip is
>   sensitive to minor bit twiddles - so we crash.
> 
>   We repeat - this is not a bzip bug.  Go fix your memory.
> 
> I have to admit I was pretty astounded.  It so happens that about the
> same time I was doing some big GIMP work & I had noticed the GIMP
> crashing occasionally, which certainly is *not* what I'm used to.
> 
> So.  I whip out the ol' memtest86+ program (http://www.memtest86.com)
> and after an hour or so it started to find errors.  I chide myself that
> this is what I get for skimping and buying non-kensington memory, order
> myself a new (Kensington this time) module, and wait.
> 
> The memory arrived the other day, I slap it in, figure I'll run
> memtest86+ again just for giggles and, you guessed it, memmory errors
> again.
> 
> The specific tests that are failing are #3 (about 25% of the time), #4
> (about 75% of the time), and 1 #2 failure out of the 60 errors.  Details
> of these tests are at
>   http://www.memtest86.com/#details
> it seems I have confirmed 'subtle & data sensitive errors'.  I would
> also point out that memtest86+ can go through multiple passes *without*
> any errors and that the memory location reported is inconsistent.  My
> fear is that I have a flaky mobo or p4 cache and this is why I pose
> these questions to the group:
> - has anyone experienced a similar problem with memory?
> - ... and if so how did you determine the culprit?
> 
> I don't like the idea of having to start swapping out either the
> processor or the mobo (particularly since I have neither the spares or
> the free time...)
> - is there a store that could thoroughly test the p4?
> - the mobo?
> - what type of cost am I looking at?  
> - can anyone recommend a particular place?
> 
> Thanks in advance for everyone's help.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 

                                 -Mike Staver
                                  staver at fimble.com
                                  mstaver at globaltaxnetwork.com