[SWLUG] 256 mb mem stick

[Robert McQueen]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 12:31:54PM +0000, hobbit at aloss.ukuu.org.uk wrote:
> The way I know of to test memory is memtest86. I seem to remember
> stuffing it on a floppy and running it overnight once. Which in
> my case established the problem wasn't the memory, but hey, at
> least it ruled it out :) 
> 
> 	http://www.teresaudio.com/memtest86/
> 
> Telsa (who is going to said lecture, yes)

Unfortunately I've found memtest86 to be wanting on several occasions.
Even with about 36 hours of running - many many passes - it didn't
detect a problem with brand-new DDR memory in my brother's computer
until we swapped the DIMMs around. From what I guess, the error on the
first DIMM was so low down it was in the bit where memtest itself was
loaded - Linux generated errors about corrupt page tables and the like,
and various 'this should never happen' type messages.

Also, my firewall currently crashes quite a bit, and apt reliably
segfaults when doing memory intensive package dependency tree building,
and even the BIOS [*] thinks the memory is dodgy sometimes, but 18 hours
of memtest86 showed nothing.

Just a heads up... it can't be relied upon to find your RAM problems. In
fact, for me it has a 70% failure rate. =)

Regards,
Rob

[*]: A relevant quote: You could wire up a dead rat to a DIMM socket and
the PC BIOS memory test would pass it just fine. -- Ethan Benson