So I grabbed an untested A1260, turned out whoever previously owned it broke the HDD flex and spilled coke on the keyboard. No big deal, cleaned everything up, replaced the flex and threw in an SSD I had around, installed Mavericks and it’s been doing great, no idea if the GPU is a revised variant but there are no graphics issues even in games and it always stays at x16, runs perfectly stable too.
That is until I decided to up the RAM on this thing to try and install something newer on it. Got a Kingston 2x2GB 667mhz kit and first it didn’t want to boot (no chime, black screen, latch LED lighting up). Cleaned the pins and the slots with isopropyl and reversed the sticks, booted up. Since then it’s being inconsistently unstable, it might boot up and work for some hours before randomly hardlocking (with no logs in the console too) or it might already hardlock on boot. No instability symptoms other than completely freezing needing to be shut down by holding the power button, even memory tests (Rember, memtest) don’t show any errors.
PRAM/SMC reset can help it start when it keeps hardlocking on boot but otherwise the issues persist. I tested it more with different sticks and combinations and found that somehow the problems only occur when the upper RAM slot contains a >1GB stick? I can’t get it to hardlock at all with either of the 2GB sticks in the bottom slot and a stock 1GB stick in the upper slot, but reversing it brings back all the instability so it’s definitely not the total RAM amount it has issues with, I assume (plus on the internet it’s said to work with 6GB). Also feels like one of the 2GB sticks in the upper slot causes a black screen with higher likelihood than other ones but I’m not sure.
Anyway, what could be going on here? Is a faulty RAM slot a possible explanation for it given that it only has issues with higher capacities? Is it "wired differently” (like some older PC motherboards couldn’t properly work when some slots weren’t populated)? I don’t feel like getting more RAM to test yet as it’ll already cost more than I paid for this laptop and I can use it with 3GB anyway.
That is until I decided to up the RAM on this thing to try and install something newer on it. Got a Kingston 2x2GB 667mhz kit and first it didn’t want to boot (no chime, black screen, latch LED lighting up). Cleaned the pins and the slots with isopropyl and reversed the sticks, booted up. Since then it’s being inconsistently unstable, it might boot up and work for some hours before randomly hardlocking (with no logs in the console too) or it might already hardlock on boot. No instability symptoms other than completely freezing needing to be shut down by holding the power button, even memory tests (Rember, memtest) don’t show any errors.
PRAM/SMC reset can help it start when it keeps hardlocking on boot but otherwise the issues persist. I tested it more with different sticks and combinations and found that somehow the problems only occur when the upper RAM slot contains a >1GB stick? I can’t get it to hardlock at all with either of the 2GB sticks in the bottom slot and a stock 1GB stick in the upper slot, but reversing it brings back all the instability so it’s definitely not the total RAM amount it has issues with, I assume (plus on the internet it’s said to work with 6GB). Also feels like one of the 2GB sticks in the upper slot causes a black screen with higher likelihood than other ones but I’m not sure.
Anyway, what could be going on here? Is a faulty RAM slot a possible explanation for it given that it only has issues with higher capacities? Is it "wired differently” (like some older PC motherboards couldn’t properly work when some slots weren’t populated)? I don’t feel like getting more RAM to test yet as it’ll already cost more than I paid for this laptop and I can use it with 3GB anyway.