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hello,

I have a small question concerning the placement of memory.

The SS20 is equipped with 6 ram chips, 2 64MB (partnumber 501-2480)
chips and four 32MB (partnumber 501-2622) chips.

I have installed (once again) the ram chips in bank order, starting
with the 64MB chips in bank 0 and bank 1, and the four 32MB chips in
banks 2 to 5.

Installing one at a time, OBP tested and so on, never complained, I
let the machine boot each time, then shut it down again.

After a few shutdown -h now, power-off via OBP, all memory was seated.
256MB of RAM as expected. Now today, I powered the machine up again to
install some additional software and lo and behold, the memory test
after POST failed with "Memory not aligned".

"test /memory" yielded some - to me - unreadable addresses in an
continuous loop.
So i powered-off the machine again and simply removed the 32MB chip
from bank 5.
Starting the machine a few times now shows me it is working properly
again.

Now my question:
Is that ram chip faulty or shouldnt I have put it into bank 5? If so,
why did it work for one or two reboots without complaining?

I would be very grateful if someone could shed some light onto this.
Unfortunately, I dont have more than a basic grasp of all that kind of
trouble ...

Claus Kick

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Claus Kick wrote:

> The SS20 is equipped with 6 ram chips, 2 64MB (partnumber 501-2480)
> chips and four 32MB (partnumber 501-2622) chips.
>
> I have installed (once again) the ram chips in bank order, starting
> with the 64MB chips in bank 0 and bank 1, and the four 32MB chips in
> banks 2 to 5.

The installation order isn't the same as the bank order. See the
SS20 service manual for more.

> Installing one at a time, OBP tested and so on, never complained, I
> let the machine boot each time, then shut it down again.
>
> After a few shutdown -h now, power-off via OBP, all memory was seated.
> 256MB of RAM as expected. Now today, I powered the machine up again to
> install some additional software and lo and behold, the memory test
> after POST failed with "Memory not aligned".
>
> "test /memory" yielded some - to me - unreadable addresses in an
> continuous loop.
> So i powered-off the machine again and simply removed the 32MB chip
> from bank 5.
> Starting the machine a few times now shows me it is working properly
> again.
>
> Now my question:
> Is that ram chip faulty or shouldnt I have put it into bank 5? If so,
> why did it work for one or two reboots without complaining?

It could be a bit iffy: borderline working. Once you've checked the
installation order, it might not be a bad idea to run VTS for a few
days.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-online.net

In <Pine.SOL.4.58.0402050930240.15747@zaphod.rite-group.com> Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:
>The installation order isn't the same as the bank order. See the
>SS20 service manual for more.

except for the requirement that there be memory at physical address 0
there is no installation order for an SS10 or SS20. if you use
the sx_cmem driver then you may want to arrange memory to make it
contiguous but that is fairly unlikely in 2004. see the sxconfig
manual page for further details on SX contiguous memory.

32MB memory sticks were not supported by earlier versions of the
firmware. if the firmware properly calculated the size of memory that
you installed then that would not be the problem.

ultrasparc3@hotmail.com wrote in message news:<200415.235417.21011@cable.prodigy.com>...
> In <Pine.SOL.4.58.0402050930240.15747@zaphod.rite-group.com> Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:
> >The installation order isn't the same as the bank order. See the
> >SS20 service manual for more.
>
> except for the requirement that there be memory at physical address 0
> there is no installation order for an SS10 or SS20. if you use
> the sx_cmem driver then you may want to arrange memory to make it
> contiguous but that is fairly unlikely in 2004. see the sxconfig
> manual page for further details on SX contiguous memory.

the funny thing is that the service manual and the special dimm
installation manual are not quite fiddling the same tune ...

I used a 64-32-64-32-32-32 installation, as proposed by the manual and
lo and behold, after the final 32mb chip, the machine did not boot at
all
The last one I added had been the one of questionable functionality.

So, I ripped it out again and threw it far, far away. And tada, the
machine
works again.

A bit weird really, but well ... at least its working again. One of
these four 32mb chips has always been a trouble-maker.

> 32MB memory sticks were not supported by earlier versions of the
> firmware. if the firmware properly calculated the size of memory that
> you installed then that would not be the problem.

Well, its OBP 2.25, so that should not have been the problem.

Thanks to both of you and sorry for this long delay to answer, but my
news server seems to be down temporarily.

Cheers,
Claus