Mac OS X Misreports My Ram

[buffsldr]

iBook 600 w/ 16mb ati video. 128mb base + 512mb chip

Bought the computer July 2002. Bought the chip over the internet in July 2002. Things have been fine until last week when I noticed OS X shows I have only 256 mb in that slot, not 512. Zapped the PRAM, did a clean install, ran permission fix, and still 3 out of 4 boots shows ram at 384 (128+256) and 1 out of 4 boots shows 640 (128+512). Then on the boots that do show 640, it kernel panics within a few minutes.

Is this a case of bad ram? Is this and obvious question? Before I hit the company up, i want to exhaust my options.

Thanks,
Buff

PS See you all on Monday (Go, G5!)

 

[King Cobra]

>Is this and obvious question?

It would be if you changed "and" to "an".

I would venture to say that this is bad RAM. Where did you purchase the RAM from? Have you relied from this company in the past?

Quality memory: www.18004memory.com

 

[MacBandit]

I agree with the bad card. If this is a double sided dimm then most likely one side of it is failing and that is why you get a crash when it does work.

 

[jimthorn]

I've been using the exact same machine as you, with the same 640MB RAM (128+512), for the same length of time, and I've never had a problem. Definitely sounds like bad RAM. I've had to deal with bad RAM in a couple of PCs over the years, and the symptoms are like what you describe (nasty unexpected crashes or computer not recognizing RAM at all). I'd pull the card right away, as you don't want a system crash/kernal panic causing data loss or screwing up the OS.

 

[Golem]

I had some ram go bad last year and had exactly the same symptom. Funnily enough OS 9 was perfectly happy to use it.

So yea bad ram.