Problem w/ Crucial DDR

[cleanerPA]

I'm in the process of building a system using an Abit KG7-RAID and two sticks of 512MB Crucial DDR.

Having checked the MB specs and manual before purchasing the board, it says it's supposed to
support 512MB sticks.

Well, with both sticks or just one (tested each individually), I can't boot. I tried reseating the memory
many, many times, no change.

All I get is a continuous series of long beeps- after searching on the web for a while, I found a KG7/KR7
FAQ that states that this is the beep code for a memory fault.

I noticed that these Crucial sticks are double-sided. I wonder if that is the problem? BTW, they are
CAS 2.5, PC2100.

I'm going to hit a local source and get a 256MB stick tomorrow to see if that fixes the problem.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Duvie]

I have heard of issues where double sided ram is ounted differently and with 2 of them you may have exceeded that standard...I am not sure the exact title but I am sure someone knows what I am referring to...

YOu are not running ecc memory or anything are you???

definitely try the onesided 256 modules...

 

[cleanerPA]

Duvie-
Thanks for the quick reply!

I'm not certain how different these issues are w/ DDR as this is my first PC w/ DDR.

I know that there were (and still are) some issues with using certain double-sided
DIMMS for "regular" SDRAM.

I can't boot even with just one stick of this stuff. If a single-sided stick of 256MB
will allow me to boot, then I'm sending the double-sided stuff back to Crucial, as
they said it would work w/ my PC and it doesn't.

This sucks- I really wanted 1GB of RAM.

This stuff is the "regular" RAM- non-ECC, non-registered. I'll bet that if I paid
the extra $$ for registered ECC RAM, it would probably work- registered RAM
works better when you run high memory densities, from my understanding.

 

[Raphamin]

Hi

BEFORE you buy the RAM, try reseating the modules several times. This is a known issue with KG7 boards. You have to push fairly hard to seat the chips properly. Best tried with motherboard out of the case if possible. If not pull out the video card and give it a go.

 

[lenjack]

The obvious thing to do is to call Crucial...they will bend over backwards to help you.

 

[cleanerPA]

Raphamin-
I owe you some thanks- your advice did it. After seating and reseating the RAM with a lot of
force, it works now.

I found another similar thread on ambmb.com and found that the trick to seating the RAM is
to push hard on one corner, then the other corner, each one so that the locking tab locks in
just from the force. Then you push down really hard in the middle, trying to support the MB
so it doesn't flex too much. :Q

Now it doesn't give me the memory beeps, but it does nothing and the monitor shows "power
on" and "standby" at the same time. WTF? The card is a Leadtek TNT2, worked when I removed
it from my old system. Time to post another thread.

 

[jsmckenna45431]

It sounds like you may have your connections mounted incorrectly on the header. Look at your mobo manual and verify the pin1 is lined up correctly on all of your connectors(Pwr LED, HDD LED, RST Swtch, etc.).

 

[cleanerPA]

Found the problems- was nothing to do w/ the connections, grounding, whatever (well the
RAM problem was real).

The BIOS wasn't properly recognizing the CPU. I cleared the CMOS and it finally POSTed
properly. Setup told me that I had an Athlon 500! Of course, going into setup messed up
the BIOS settings again, so I had to clear it again. D/l updated BIOS from Abit's site,
flash the BIOS and finally, it says Athlon XP 1500?!? Manually change it to 1800 and it
works fine.