Probable memory issue-help confirm?

[thesoundsmith]

I have been having crashing issues with this Mac since day one, with no apparent reason. My dual 1.25 MDD was purchased with what was supposed to be 2G RAM. It all tested fine in OS9, and later in up to OS 10.2.8, every time I would look at memory or test it, it always read fine.

I just am trying to complete a very rocky upgrade to 10.3.5 - it keeps crashing, but after several restarts, appears to be okay.

I looked at the system profiler and it tells me I have 1.75G RAM, and that I have 3 512M chips and one 256M chip, = 1.75G

Is this OSX 3.5's way of telling me I've got a bad RAM chip, or is it blocking out system areas like Apple IIs of old?

And if it IS bad, can I just pull it, or must I replace it? It's in DIMM3, J20 - lowest numbered socket, highest numbered DIMM pkg. (Sorry, my hardware manual is many boxes away...)

[midiw]

I have been having crashing issues with this Mac since day one, with no apparent reason. My dual 1.25 MDD was purchased with what was supposed to be 2G RAM. It all tested fine in OS9, and later in up to OS 10.2.8, every time I would look at memory or test it, it always read fine.

I just am trying to complete a very rocky upgrade to 10.3.5 - it keeps crashing, but after several restarts, appears to be okay.

I looked at the system profiler and it tells me I have 1.75G RAM, and that I have 3 512M chips and one 256M chip, = 1.75G

Is this OSX 3.5's way of telling me I've got a bad RAM chip, or is it blocking out system areas like Apple IIs of old?

And if it IS bad, can I just pull it, or must I replace it? It's in DIMM3, J20 - lowest numbered socket, highest numbered DIMM pkg. (Sorry, my hardware manual is many boxes away...)

The SystemProfiler is telling the truth. Your Mac has 1.75 GB RAM. So the shop that sold you that Mac obviously gave you the wrong info about how much RAM that Mac had.

When you have the SystemProfiiler open take a look at the "log" which will give you the history of your crashes. "Reading" those log reports will tell you what is wrong. However it does take some patience in reading the log reports.

MDD macs are very fussy about having the correct RAM.

Here are a couple of sites that may give you some insight about RAM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cas_latency

http://www.transintl.com/technotes/222.htm

If it's possible at this time I would go back to the shop that sold you the Mac and have them give you the correct amount of RAM and the correct RAM sticks.

[thesoundsmith]

Thanks. The box is several years old, I doublt they will support it now. But how come v10.2.8 said I had 2G, not 1.75?

[midiw]

Could you try the System Profiler in OS 9 to see what that tells you now?

Could you give me the results of what that tells you now?

Have you looked at the RAM sticks?

I was not aware or evern seen for myself that SystemProfiiler in any Mac OS could report different results.

[methezer]

Have you tried running the Apple Hardware Test? This checks your RAM (among some other things). It doesn't always deliver but worth trying just to see what it says.

Also, what kind of crashes are you experiencing? Are you getting KPs? Is the screen freezing? Beach ball of death?

[thesoundsmith]

Wow. Been awhile since I checked this thread-sorry. I get all the above - KPs mostly, locked screen, beachballs, 'Your application has quit unexpectedly' with an error message that I forget at the moment, but implies a bad instructionat some address. I thought this was a bad RAM indication - go to somewhere that isn't there and crash. But I pulled the suspect chip and the system ran smoothly, DP went 5 days without a single cxrash.

But last week it started again. I'm still researching, but thought I should check this thread. Thanks for the responses.

Thje Apple Hardware test I got with my OS upgrade will not run on my computer - I think it's for the G5. My old disk is around here somewhere, but it always told me everything was OK before, with the same crash behavior. All RAM sticks were firmly in place, no dust or debris, fans working loudly as usual, though it has been hot in here the last week. This could be a heat issue as well. But I'm looking...