[gentoo-amd64] Re: problems with emerging programs

["Duncan" <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

"Patric Douhane" <patric@ownit.se> posted
04b401c6e136$bacb3140$7b00a8c0@Turbo2, excerpted below, on  Tue, 26 Sep
2006 08:41:00 +0200:

> Ok that could be it, though I've never noticed that there could be
> something wrong with the memory before, but I ran Windows XP and perhaps
> you don't notice such problems then? Can I test my memory with Memtest86??

You can, but it won't necessarily find a problem.  If it does tho, you
know you have one, but on mine, it didn't, because the problem wasn't
really with the memory, but with the speed of access.  Memtest86 came up
100% fine, but it was running on an otherwise idle system (duh, since you
boot to it and can't be running anything else at the time), and simply
wasn't stressing the timings enough to trigger the problem, which as I
said wasn't the memory cells themselves going bad, but simply the timing.

That was part of the frustration.  At first I didn't know which component
it was, and the memory never did actually turn out bad.  It's just that it
wasn't stable at the rated speed when under stress.  I never /did/
actually know it was the memory until I got the BIOS that let me slow it
down, and that cured it -- and then when I got new memory and it ran just
fine at the higher speed, so it wasn't that the mobo memory traces simply
couldn't handle it either.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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