At 10:35 07/07/01, catherine williamson wrote:
>I tried out what you suggested and here are the
>results:
>
>I removed all three 128mb sticks and put in a
>32mb 66mhz memory. There was no error message.
>I substituted the 32mb memory with a 64mb stick
>that I borrowed. Again there was no error
>message. The 32mb stick had 8 chips on each side.
>The 64mb stick was marked 100mhz and had 8 chips
>on one side and none on the other. The 128mb ram
>was pc133 and had 8 chips on one side only as well...
>Since the computer runs OK, would it be alright
>to just turn off the memory check? If it's OK,
>would someone please tell me how? I can't find
>anything in the BIOS to do this. Thanks.


Hi Cathy

Did you try just using one 128 MB PC133 memory stick?
I'll assume that you did and that it didn't work.

The problem may be that your motherboard came out before
PC133 memory came along. The motherboard reads the SPD
(Serial Presence Detect) chip (a tiny read only memory
chip on the memory stick) and sees that the memory stick
is PC133. It does not recognize what PC133 means and so
it reports an error. Of course the memory stick works
after you tell the motherboard to ignore the error...
because PC133 memory should actually work fine in a
motherboard meant for PC66 or PC100 memory.

Your only solution (apart from cancelling the error
message each time the machine boots) may be to find a
BIOS setting that lets you choose between automatic
detection of memory timings and manual specification
of the memory modules settings. Choose to manually enter
the specifications instead of letting them be read from
the SPD chip. Choose the fastest setting for each
entry. If you see PC66/PC100, choose PC100. If there is
no choice like this, hopefully when you manually set all
memory parameters, the motherboard won't check for
PC66/PC100.

Regards,
Bill

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