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RE: OS X and |
February, 02, 2003 7:25 AM |
midd33 |
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while we're on this topic, how exactly do I get memtest to work. I've been able to get the terminal to recognize the memtest directory. But as far as launching it, I'm not sure. I know its memtest [passes] but if I try it like that for example /memtest<500M>[1] I get either directory not found or Ambiguous command or something to that effect. |
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RE: OS X and |
February, 02, 2003 7:18 AM |
ken882 |
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muri, Are you using XPF as an instller? Currently, I'm using the Sonnet installer, but I've switched back and forth a few times. Considering that even new world Mac users have had problems using third-party memory, it's possible that OS 10.2.3 is more forgiving of memory than 10.2 was. However, I've had 10.2.3 installed and still had problems. I wish that either Apple or the CPU upgrade board makers or the memory vendors would be able to tell us exactly what works and what doesn't, as I don't want to spend months trying RAM and having to return that which doesn't work. |
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RE: OS X and |
February, 02, 2003 5:26 AM |
muri |
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My 7300 (PL g3/500) has 6 OWC dimms 128 FPM 4K (2k+2k) all interleaved. About a month ago I was experiencing frequent crashes. I decided to format the entire HD and then I have upgraded to 10.2.3. Since then I never had any single crash. Maybe I'm just lucky ... I don't know what fixed my problem, if reformatting or upgrading, but now everithing works perfectly. I don't think that any vendor could produce new ram for our systems ... with prices as low as now they have such little room to make profits ... maybe it's true that millions of old world macs are still running, but how many people like us are still willing to spend money on them? |
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RE: OS X and |
February, 02, 2003 1:39 AM |
tpmco |
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I heard from a very good source today that Apple produced some 40 million Power legacy macs. Of that production , some 20 million are still in use. I would have to conclude that there is sizeable market potential for an upgraded RAM module to be produced and sold for the legacy Macs. Are there any RAM vendors out there who would like to weigh-in on this point? Mark |
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RE: OS X and |
February, 02, 2003 1:27 AM |
tpmco |
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hello willschou1-- I read with interest your post regarding different types of RAM that have been used in the 73-9600 powermacs and clones. Truly is a den of snakes. I am wondering--can a RAM module containing 10 ns PC100 chips with a voltage reduction to 3.3 volt (down from the 5V the 73-9600 etc use) be made to work in our machines? I have looked at the beige g3 RAM modules side-by-side with the FPM modules I use in my 7600. The beige g3 module is almost identical except for the notch placement is about a half-notch different, and the beige g3 module is a little taller. The beige g3 module is 3.3 volt, though, but it sounds like this conversion is already being made by some vendors and, as such, is available technology. I guess it comes down to a question of whether or not the 73- 9600 etc machines can work with 10 ns memory. Do you know who might have some answers? The two main advantages to using a converted beige g3 module would be a big speed increase and a lot more bang for the buck (256 mb beige g3 modules cost about the same as a 128 mb FPM module). Thanks for your reseach and post--Mark |
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RE: OS X and |
February, 02, 2003 1:00 AM |
tpmco |
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Ken-- The "burping" refers to a range of symptoms from incomplete boot-ups, freezing of OS X (10.1 or 10.2), the ghost screen coming up saying I need to restart the computer, to a complete inability to restart the computer using the Restart function under the Apple menu, or through a restart button placed in a dialogue box (the latter being where I get what I call the "dead fart", and what others call an "abbreviated startup chime"). When I pulled out the 128 mb module (leaving just 168 mb in the computer), the dead fart totally disappeared. Other symptoms are greatly reduced despite having less RAM, but the one symptom that still persists to some degree is the incomplete boot ups. Mark |
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RE: OS X and memory problems |
February, 02, 2003 12:38 AM |
asarath |
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My quarter byte's worth to this thread: Had horrible problems installing X on an 8600 (Powerlogix G3/400) with a mix of 16, 64 and 128 ram. 9.0.4 worked reasonably well with this machine - occasional crashes. Used (the late) Newer's Gauge Pro (under 9.0.4) and it would keep stopping at one point. Finally dug into the machine and fiddled around (heart in mouth). Discovered that the 64 MB chip was "bad". Threw it out. Gauge Pro cleared all memory. X installed and runs perfectly. btw both 128 chips are OWC EDO and the 16 are the original chips from Apple. Hope this helps. |
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RE: OS X and Memory Problems |
February, 01, 2003 8:22 PM |
Tony.Scaminaci |
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Sorry for the delay in getting back to you guys on your questions about memtest, but my 9500 crashed and I've been attempting to get it back up and running. Looks like severe directory damage so I'm running every disk utility I have trying to resurrect it. To invoke memtest at the unix command line, you type "./memtest" while you're in the the memtest directory. You can't invoke it as "memtest" because unix doesn't put the current directory in your search path by default for security reasons. Therefore you need the "./" in front of it to tell unix to search the current working directory. As far as explaining the finer points of this program, all I can tell you is what's in Charles's readme files and the ReadmeFirst file that I included. Please remember that I didn't write this program - all I did was get it to run under OS X. It's had two previous authors who haven't done anything with the program for the past couple of years. |
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RE: OS X and |
February, 01, 2003 7:09 PM |
ken882 |
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Mark, What do you mean when you refer to the 128 Mb DIMMs "burping"? Are you referring to the same freezing problems that I'm seeing? Ken |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 11:13 PM |
tpmco |
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Ken-- I am running 10.1.5, 10.2, and 10.2.3--no difference among them when it comes down to the symptoms. The 128 mb modules burp with all versions. The older 32 and 64 mb modules don't have the "dead farts", but I have applications "quitting unexpectedly" all the time. My two cents--Mark |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 10:23 PM |
ken882 |
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Mark, Considering that even people with recent-model Macs seem to be having a problem with third party memory, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple issues a version of OS X that is more tolerant of third party RAM. Because if I were an IT manager at a company, I'd be a bit afraid of running critical apps on an OS that was running so close to the limits of memory that even in-spec memory might cause a system freeze. Which leads to the question, is it possible that OS 10.2.3 might be more tolerant of RAM than 10.2? I tried 10.2.3 on my machine to no avail, but maybe it improved things for some people. It would be interesting to see if this is true. |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 6:04 PM |
tpmco |
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Ken-- We might need to look at some alternative solutions outside our box. Like can someone produce a 256 or 512 mb 168 pin dimm with a 10 ns speed? Or, a ram-slot adapter to use PC RAM? Or a ROM SIMM (which most of us can use) which will, in hardware, allow faster RAM in our existing slots? Or system bus upgrade along the lines of what is being done to get the 800 mhz processors to run? Other fixes might be in operating system software, or soft-ROM. But I agree with you that we need a fix here that will satisfy all of the PowerMac and clone machines. Some guarantees, definitely. I think the potential market is well in excess of the market for the Virtual PC application, just as a market size comparator, yet those folks see their efforts as worthwhile, and they probably are. Mark |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 5:10 PM |
ken882 |
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tpmco, Your suggestion is intriguing, but since the visitors to this forum have a variety of different machines, accelerators, etc., I'm not sure that a co-op would be the best thing. What would be good, though, if a new section of this site were set up which would be a database of sorts where we could look up our machine model and accelerator and find out what memory is actually guaranteed to work. Of course, figuring out who to believe could be problematic. It's really too bad that as of now that the accelerator manufacturers and memory dealers haven't passed on any of their first-hand experience. I can understand why these manufacturers and retailers don't know about every possible combination of components and memory and what the results are, but I'd think that somewhere, there would be a posting that would say "if you have this machine and this accelerator card, you can't go wrong if you by RAM type X from dealer Y". Perhaps a manufacturer or retailer is reading this and cares to comment. |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 5:05 PM |
ken882 |
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Will, Thanks for the detailed info. Currently, I have 4 128 Mb EDO 4K refresh DIMMs in my machine. So you are saying that if I get a good 4K DIMM, it will work fine? Or are 4K DIMMs always a risk in my machine? I don't mind replacing them, but I only have so much money, and I don't want to buy tons more memory that I actually need. If in your experience I'll always have problems with the 4K DIMMs, then I'll consider replacing them. It's appealing to be able to put 128 Mb of RAM in a single slot, though. Also, I noticed that the Ramjet's 64 Mb 2K DIMMs are about $55 each, while OWC has 64 Mb 2K DIMMs for less than half that? If I go for the OWC ones, what potential problems am I getting myself into? Thanks again for your advice. |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 4:00 PM |
tpmco |
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It seems that my email addresses were omitted from my most recent post (not my doing), but here they are again: tpmco@earthlink.net or tpmco@attbi.com Maybe they will survive this time. Mark |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 3:30 PM |
tpmco |
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To all-- Maybe we should look at forming a group (or co-op) to purchase a large lot of memory for our machines, but first we need to determine what our memory specification should be. As I said in a earlier post, memory specs are not my forte. I am running at present 6 of the legacy power macs, and would like to have 512 mb in each machine at some point in time. That works out to 24--128 mb modules I need to reach that goal (or 48 --64 mb modules or some mixture of the two to help with de- interleaving when advantageous to do so). Does anyone feel such an approach might be worthwhile? We would need a coordinator, and a few testers to begin with. My email is or if any of you would like to explore or encourage such an approach. Thanks--Mark |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 2:21 PM |
willschou1 |
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" RE: OS X and January, 31, 2003 1:45 PM ken882 . I just spoke to a representative at Ramjet. I told him about my problem, and he agreed with the posting on their site that the J700 board is based on the PowerMac 7200 board, and that Apple specified that only 2K refresh DIMMs were to be used on that board. The representative said that they decided on that policy after receiving many returns of 4K refresh memory on such machines. Could anyone with a machine such as mine (a UMAX J700 with a Sonnet G4 800 Mhz accelerator) either confirm or deny this? I'd be interested in knowing what type of memory you are using and if you had any problems with getting everything to run O.K." Are you sure the guy said Apple 7200 board??? If he did you can throw everything he said in the crapper! The UMAX J700/S900 's board is more closely related to the Apple 8500,8600 and 9500,9600 motherboards which are a much better design. It is true that there are memory issues when upgrading. I had problems with ram chips when going over G3 300mhz then again when I upgraded to 500 mhz G3. Jaguar also caused problems with ram chips in my J700. Ram which ran fine at lower mhz caused errors and freeezing at higher speeds. The important thing seems to buy ram which can be returned if you have problems with it. It used to be good advice to use EDO 2k refresh ram rather then Fastpage or 4k refresh ram and the best 128mb chips for these machines were called 2k refresh per side. Ram sold for these machines has changed in the last few years. Most of it including the OWC ram is now made using cheap PC 3.3 volt ram and using a chip on the board to convert it to 5 volt ram.The bad chip rate is much higher but when you get good chips it works fine. My issues with faster G3 cpu's were fixed by removing older 8mb 70 ns chips which came with the machine new. My issues with jaguar were solved by having all my ram tested at a local ram chip shop. Turned out I had been interleaving fast page and EDO chips together a big no no but worked with OS 9.x (the chips weren't marked) I have no 4k refresh ram in my machine. I've stayed away from buying it as many people report issues with it in upgraded machines. However others say it is fine. EDO verus FPM no longer seems to be much of an issue. The exception is 128mb chips there are no true 2k refresh chips but rather 2k on a side which equals 4k when put together. I wish the ram issues were more straight forward. Hope this helps rather then confuses. RAM issues were my biggest problem upgrading. I replaced other things first thinking it couldn't be the issue since it worked fine in OS 9.x |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 1:45 PM |
ken882 |
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I just spoke to a representative at Ramjet. I told him about my problem, and he agreed with the posting on their site that the J700 board is based on the PowerMac 7200 board, and that Apple specified that only 2K refresh DIMMs were to be used on that board. The representative said that they decided on that policy after receiving many returns of 4K refresh memory on such machines. Could anyone with a machine such as mine (a UMAX J700 with a Sonnet G4 800 Mhz accelerator) either confirm or deny this? I'd be interested in knowing what type of memory you are using and if you had any problems with getting everything to run O.K. Thanks. |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 12:41 PM |
ken882 |
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Tony, I just visited Ramjet's site, and in the detailed information about memory for 7300 - 9600 systems (I assume that my J700 is a clone of one of these?), they had the following information posted: "For G3/4 Processor Upgraded Machines: 7300-9600 series machines that have been upgraded to newer G3 or G4 processors cannot run the standard 4k Refresh 64mb or 128mb DIMMs. Rather, they will require our 2k Refresh 64mb DIMMs listed below." I'm using 4K Refresh 128 Mb DIMMs in my J700 now. Could that be the problem? If so, I'm surprised that neither Sonnet nor OWC advised me about this. But when I was first shopping for memory, I saw so many conflicting pieces of information, that it wouldn't surprise me if this isn't exactly true, either. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks. |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 12:19 PM |
ken882 |
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Tony, I downloaded the memory test utility from your site, but I can't figure out how to run it. I ended up with a folder called "memtester-2.93.1". There's a file there called "memtest". I assume that this is the compiled file. But in the ReadMe, you specify that the invocation command line starts as ".lmemtest". I'm not a Unix expert, but I thought that to run a program, you just type its name. In that case, I can understand the "command not found" reply I get in response to entering your command statement. But I also tried "memtest" as the first word on the command line, and that didn't work, either. Could you explain what I'm doing wrong, please? Thanks. |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 31, 2003 10:23 AM |
sneitzel |
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Tony, I downloaded the memory tester you have posted but was having some problems getting it to run. I must admit to being a novice at poking around in the terminal window but I did get the tester to run it just could not lock any of the memory to test it no matter how small I set the memory size. Could you possibly go into a little more detail on how to run the tester correctly and what the tester should show when it runs corrtectly? You may contact my off forum if you want but maybe some others could benefit from the information as well. Thanks. Scott |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 30, 2003 10:13 PM |
tconway735 |
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I had bought four cheap 128 EDOs to fill out the eight slots in my 7500. Before installing, the logic board died and I got a 9600 from e-bay. The Apple-authorized tech I used swapped all the goodies. When I got it home I added the four 128s and a 500 G3 for the 300 G3 and then couldn't boot up. Later speaking to a very knowledgable Mac person, he said he thought he recalled "issues" with 9600s and 128s. I pulled all the 128s and it booted. Over a few weeks, I started reinstalling and it continued booting no problem. Then the same person mentioned that interleaving might actually cause a problem in X rather than the benefit I had always kept in mind. I de-interleaved and put a total of six 128s in one bank and a mix of 64s and 32s in the other. I soon discovered one of the 128s was bad, replaced it with a 32 and have had no more memory problems that I know of. Some memory experiences for what they're worth? |
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RE: OS X and bad memory |
January, 30, 2003 11:17 AM |
Tony.Scaminaci |
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OWC often claims that their DIMMs will work fine in the OS X unsupported machines and they're wrong just as often. Having been through the bad memory blues for a few months (and I still have some flaky OWC DIMMs), I still can't put my finger on the exact reason why certain DIMMs won't work in these older machines under OS X. Some people have indicated that certain memory bus buffer chips may be the cause, but I'm not even sure about that. I tend to believe that you get what you pay for in memory. I purchased a few DIMMs from RamJet at a very high price (compared to OWC for example), and they work flawlessly in my 9500 under OS X. I've swapped out three sets of OWC DIMMs so far and may have to do so again. Apple has stated that memory timing is "tighter" under OS X than under 9. They tightened up the timing specs within the machine's OpenFirmware. I remember the same type of memory issues with my Sawtooth AGP system after upgrading to firmware 4.2.8. A lot of people found that they couldn't use some of their cheaper DIMMs under OS X after flashing the firmware in the supported machines. So the memory timing issues are not just related to unsupported machines, although these particular systems seem to be much pickier about memory timing than the supported machines. I posted a memory testing utility for OS X on my home page at http://www.appleisp.com/~frisky. This should assist you in ruling out marginal DIMMs in your system. |
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RE: OS X and |
January, 30, 2003 10:57 AM |
tpmco |
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Ken882-- Ditto that. I could also use some pointers in this area. Are there some OWC technical people out there that can help us with memory issues? Or Apple people (unofficial, of course). Thanks--Mark PS: See also the "abbreviated startup chime" thread. |