External Hard Drive

Well, Dan. After some help from Google, I basically took your same approach. Downloaded Memtest, created a bootable CD-Rom, and ran it - got tons of errors. I then pulled all 4 SIMMS in my machine and began reinserting them 1 at a time and then testing. 3rd one was totally shot, triggering errors. The other 3 were fine. Luckily, the bad one was one of a pair of slower 512MB sticks, and not one of the two 1 GB sticks I had. I've been meaning to replace it and kick the old girl up to 4 Gigs anyway ... so now's my chance.

Huge pain in the butt, but I've been using my computer for 8 hours and no BSOD, so I guess I found the problem. I should have diagnosed it sooner - I went about 3.5 years on this machine without ever having it freeze or crash, and then all the sudden, it slows down and I'm getting BSODs every hour on the hour.

Oh well ... problem solved and it gave me a good excuse to pop the top and clean out the guts.

 

Regarding 4 gigabytes of RAM, if you're a Windows user, I'd advise caution there. I mean you can plug 4 gigabytes into it, but you can't use them all. Curiously enough the total memory you're likely to get varies, but the average sounds like somewhere around 3.25 to 3.5 gigabytes or so.

I don't know if this exists with Macs or not, but with Windows the issue is that 32 bit OSes can't use all 4 gigabytes. XP does it, and Vista does it. Changing to a 64 bit version of Windows will let you use it all (up to a new limit of 8 terabytes, which sounds like a lot but might only be a few decades away if we get a few technological innovations in computer hardware), but there can be compatibility problems. Some have speculated that the next version of Windows (currently known as Windows 7) might signal a full scale changeover to 64 bit OSes. I really think that it IS about time for adopting 64 bit OS versions as the standard version, but it could mean a lot of upgrading hassles, requiring new hardware or at least new drivers for old hardware (which manufacturers are often unwilling to provide).

I only found out about the RAM limit fairly recently. I had no idea. Then I started seeing a bunch of people in various forums complaining that they thought that their motherboard or memory of whatever was defective because they couldn't see the full four gigabytes.

Anyway, I'm not saying you shouldn't get 4 gigs anyway. If you decide you want the extra fraction of a gigabyte and that it's worth the capacity that would go to waste there's nothing wrong with that, if I can get all four gigabytes of my dead or dying RAM replaced I'm thinking of doing that myself. I'm to the point where I want as much memory as I can get. It helps with Photoshop, it helps with multitasking.. I'd just as rather be able to turn off my paging file and never page another byte to the hard drive. Four gigabytes isn't going to be enough for that, but still I'd be happy getting to 3.5 gigs for now.

I just don't want it to be a rude shock when you boot up windows and see that you aren't getting all 4 gigs.

 

I'm on a powerbook G4 right now. I am in desperate need of RAM not to mention it sounds like an ariplane taking off when the fan turns on oh and my left appple key fell off twice yesterday. I ned to buy some stuff fofr this computer.

 

I actually did run into the fact that OSX can take up to 32 gigabytes, but I'd already started approaching this to focus specifically on the Windows platform since that's what I'm familiar with. I'm impressed that it's got 8 slots, I haven't seen that many slots in a PC in a while. I've got four slots, and it sounds like using all four of them can tend to hurt the performance of my RAM, forcing me to run it at looser and slower timings.

The same info that stated that OSX can handle up to 32 gigabytes said that it still wasn't a true 64 bit OS. There seems to be some complications regarding what is and isn't 64 bit. Some info suggests that the GUI is 32 bit, so processes dealing with the GUI have to be 32 bit as well. Also there's this:
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/03/photosho ... t-in-os-x/

But this is all starting to feel like the era of the debate between the Super Nintendo and the Turbo Grafix, and the argument about whether the Turbo Grafix was a "true" 16 bit console. I'd like to see the 4 gig memory limit opened up, but real world performance gains from running 64 bit applications and OSes are currently limited except for certain exceptions.

It doesn't surprise me that Macs seem to be having an easier transition to 64 bit functionality, though. That's at least one advantage of the restricted range of models and hardware types that are offered for Mac systems, it's GOT to be simpler to develop OSX compared to working on PC OSs. It sounds like the older PowerPC systems were even 64 bit capable, although they may have performed worse running 64 bit applications due to architecture issues that are way beyond me.

 

I'm sure you know this but you need to make sure that you find the amount it can run not the amount it can take. The video editor/creative arts person at my church just bought a macbook and found out that it can take 4 gigs of RAM but it can only use 3 gigs.

 

Really? Now that's a surprise.

I did a web search and found out that this is at least a problem with Macbook Pros. But it should only relate to older models, they're supposed to have started using a newer platform chipset that works with 4 gigs. I don't know enough about Macs to know how the Pro version differs, all the info I found was on Pros. It sounds like this may actually be the same problem that I was talking about PCs having (despite using an OS known to be capable of handling more.. which doesn't make sense, admittedly), but rather than letting the system use as much as it can get the Mac people put in a hard limit in the firmware that only lets it use 3 gigs, rather than the 3 and a fraction that a PC would get. One of those weird Mac ways of doing things that I don't agree with at all.

The Mac store page sure seems to suggest that new Macbooks should be able to handle 4 gigs. They have a 4 gig memory configuration option, and it also says this:
"the MacBook supports up to 4GB of RAM."

I found a very confused report by someone who said that they only got 3 gigs out of 4 total, but later said that it was their own fault for only installing one of two memory sticks. Which... should have given 2. Supposedly it was fixed somehow, but I don't understand what the problem was or how it was solved.

 

That is sort of what I was saying watch the wording because it says it supports 4GB and it does but it can only have 3GB active I'll check with my tech guy and make sure my info is corrrect.

 

I'm just repeating what I heard so it is most likely incorrect.

 

Ugh - got another BSOD today. Maybe the memory wasn't the problem. Worse yet, maybe the motherboard DIMM slots are shot and burning out my modules. Oh well ... might be time to rebuild the old girl. We can make her stronger - we have the technology.

 

That's too bad sorry you didn't find the problem. Off topic but today I have a super sweet computer setup. I am running the powerbook for school and my desktop for fun stuff at the same time side by side so I'll be watching some hulu and doing science at the same time. I love it I feel like such a geek tho.

 

I saw too many references to the 3 gig limit for it to be that. It sounds like it's a hardware limit, the story is that some things on the computer may say that you have 4 gigs, but some specific thing in OSX, some readout that tells you how much memory you can really use, says 3, and that's how you know that you've got the hardware limit.

All the references I found said that the problem was in older MBPs, that the new ones can use all four. But I didn't see any clear way of finding out which version a particular laptop was, the changes may be mostly under the hood.