Re: [gentoo-user] Dodgy hardware?!?!

[Hans-Werner Hilse <hilse@web.de>]

Hi,

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 06:34:01 -0600 Dan Farrell <dan@spore.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:27:10 +1100
> Dave Oxley <dave@daveoxley.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Is there a way of testing the RAM? 
> 
> a great way, yes, and it's provided on the gentoo boot cds, even the
> minimal.  at the isolinux (boot:) prompt, just type memtest-86 and
> patiently await the completion of just one test.  

But always remember that, given the hypothesis that the RAM is working
OK, all memtest can do is to _negate_ this hypothesis. It can never
verify that hypothesis.

So it's always worth to start memtest -- after all, it might fail and
you know for sure that RAM is bad (or memory timing or whatever, but
it's faulty hardware then). But if it doesn't fail that doesn't mean
that RAM is alright!

-hwh
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