Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-12-11 Thread Elton Machado
In this case I would check about the processor cooler. It could not be 
working fine and need some lubrification or a clean, or in worst case a 
new one.

Regards,
Elton
Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 11:45:06PM -0500, Matt Emmerton wrote:
: Given the cost of memory these days, swapping it out is generally cheaper
: than the cost of random downtime and recovering from crashes in a production
: environment.
I am *really* not a hardware guy.  I just had a box built and will deal with
hardware issues when I have to.  But I did turn the box off overnight, and
the build crashes went away.
jm
--
My other computer is your Windows box.
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RE: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-12-03 Thread Sandy Rutherford
If the goal is simply to stress-test the memory, just take a huge file
and write a shell script loop to gzip it and ungzip it ad infinitum.
I used this technique a while ago to ferret out some memory problems.
In this case, the bad memory manifested itself as gzip eventually
reporting an error that the file was corrupted.  I'm not saying that
this is a fool-proof way of finding bad memory, but it did the job at
the time.

Sandy


 On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 12:53:44 -0600 (CST), 
 Chris Dillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:

  On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Chuck Robey wrote:
  I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be 
  said. Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A 
  WORKING MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!
  

  The memory-test programs are not entirely worthless.  Just recently we 
  had a lab of PCs where some of them would go wonky and randomly lock 
  up hard.  This was happening for months and we couldn't put our finger 
  on the problem.  We thought maybe it was something in our Windows 
  build, so we tried booting Microsoft's stand-alone memory tester (yes, 
  they have one, and I'm not sure where I got it, MSDN perhaps?), very 
  similar to memtest86.  After a random number of test passes, sometimes 
  100+ passes (many hours, overnight), some of the machines would lock 
  up.  No errors indicated, they just froze.  Oops.  Definately NOT a 
  software problem.  After fiddling around with some of the 
  clock/voltage related BIOS settings, putting new thermal compound 
  between the CPUs and heatsinks, reseating cards and memory, placing 
  the PCs inside a hexagram drawn on the floor and dancing nak... 
  nevermind... we got them to run the tests continuously through our 
  entire 4-day Thanksgiving weekend without problems.  For the last 4 
  days (including today), we haven't had any problems with them.

  So, these memtest programs can at least be valuable stress-testing 
  tools but be prepared to run them for hours or days at a time before 
  they will catch something. :-)

  -- 
Chris Dillon - cdillon(at)wolves.k12.mo.us
FreeBSD: The fastest, most open, and most stable OS on the planet
- Available for IA32, IA64, AMD64, PC98, Alpha, and UltraSPARC 
  architectures
- PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, and S/390 under development
- http://www.freebsd.org

  Q: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
  A: Why is putting a reply at the top of the message frowned upon?

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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-12-03 Thread Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.
Chris Dillon wrote:
After fiddling around with some of the clock/voltage
related BIOS settings, putting new thermal compound
between the CPUs and heatsinks, reseating cards and
memory, placing the PCs inside a hexagram drawn on
the floor and dancing nak... nevermind... we got them
to run   snip

I knew there was a reason why those MCSE programs
were so expensive :-D ... now, why wasn't I notified^H^H^H^H^H
invited ... umm, yeah; nevermind 
Kevin Kinsey
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RE: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-12-02 Thread Chris Dillon
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Chuck Robey wrote:
I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be 
said. Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A 
WORKING MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!

Anyone who tells you otherwise is no friend of yours, because they 
are making your life hard.  It's very alluring to assume that 
programs written to do a job actually do that job, and most 
especially in the case of memory test, one would *really* **REALLY** 
wish that Chuck here was lying, cause you honestly need a memory 
test program, but the truth is otherwise: memory test programs don't 
work.  At the very best, if they spend 30 minutes carefully 
exercising memory, you get a factor that is maybe 10% reliable, and 
90% wishful guessing.

With that in mind, sometimes, the very best memory test programs can 
give you better ideas that memory you thought was failing IS 
failing.  The opposite, proving that memory is good, is just 
totally, totally useless, you cannot take any data home at all about 
your memory being good.
The memory-test programs are not entirely worthless.  Just recently we 
had a lab of PCs where some of them would go wonky and randomly lock 
up hard.  This was happening for months and we couldn't put our finger 
on the problem.  We thought maybe it was something in our Windows 
build, so we tried booting Microsoft's stand-alone memory tester (yes, 
they have one, and I'm not sure where I got it, MSDN perhaps?), very 
similar to memtest86.  After a random number of test passes, sometimes 
100+ passes (many hours, overnight), some of the machines would lock 
up.  No errors indicated, they just froze.  Oops.  Definately NOT a 
software problem.  After fiddling around with some of the 
clock/voltage related BIOS settings, putting new thermal compound 
between the CPUs and heatsinks, reseating cards and memory, placing 
the PCs inside a hexagram drawn on the floor and dancing nak... 
nevermind... we got them to run the tests continuously through our 
entire 4-day Thanksgiving weekend without problems.  For the last 4 
days (including today), we haven't had any problems with them.

So, these memtest programs can at least be valuable stress-testing 
tools but be prepared to run them for hours or days at a time before 
they will catch something. :-)

--
 Chris Dillon - cdillon(at)wolves.k12.mo.us
 FreeBSD: The fastest, most open, and most stable OS on the planet
 - Available for IA32, IA64, AMD64, PC98, Alpha, and UltraSPARC architectures
 - PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, and S/390 under development
 - http://www.freebsd.org
Q: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
A: Why is putting a reply at the top of the message frowned upon?
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Re: [OT] Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-28 Thread Chuck Swiger
Adam Fabian wrote:
Does parity RAM reliably report on it's reliability?
Nope.  At least if you're talking about parity memory on FPM or EDO DRAM, 
which only has a fifty-fifty chance of even noticing an error, and a 1/9 
(~11%) chance of reporting an error with the parity bit itself.

Modern SDRAM and DDR memory with ECC will reliably detect and correct 
single-bit errors, will reliably detect two-bit errors, and even has a very 
good shot (~90+%?) of detecting larger multibit errors.

--
-Chuck
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-26 Thread Lowell Gilbert
Chuck Robey [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 With that in mind, sometimes, the very best memory test programs can give
 you better ideas that memory you thought was failing IS failing.  The
 opposite, proving that memory is good, is just totally, totally useless,
 you cannot take any data home at all about your memory being good.

That's exactly right.  The false negative rate is quite high, but the
false positive rate is virtually zero.  However, this makes it far
from useless, because in cases like the question that started the
thread, bad memory *is* extremely likely to be the cause, and a
software memory tester is probably going to report that.  Given the
frequency with which messages on this list say no, it can't be bad
memory because it works under Windows, this is *extremely* useful.
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-26 Thread Vulpes Velox
On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 03:46:20 +
Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
 : Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 : 
 :  This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
 11, and now:  5.
 :  
 :  Is this bad memory?
 : 
 : That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
 : test it.
 
 Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
 somewhere else to get it tested?

Look for memtest86. You can now even get it as a iso :)
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-26 Thread Vulpes Velox
Not seen this exact error before, but I recently had a mobo go bad
that would produce errors with compiles and ect before it would
hardlock. It would go flaky under heavy I/O.

I tested for it by swapping out the proc and ram.

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 20:16:23 +
Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10, 11,
 and now 5.
 
 Is this bad memory?
 
 
 S -DYP  -c /usr/src/lib/libc/../libc/net/res_debug.c -o res_debug.o
 cc -O -pipe  -DLIBC_RCS -DSYSLIBC_RCS -I/usr/src/lib/libc/include
 -D__DBINTERFACE_PRIVATE -DINET6 -DPOSIX_MISTAKE
 -I/usr/src/lib/libc/../libc/locale -DBROKEN_DES -DYP  -c
 /usr/src/lib/libc/../libc/net/res_init.c -o res_init.o
 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 5
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src/lib/libc.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src/lib.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src.
 *** Error code 1
 
 Stop in /usr/src.
 neptune# 
 
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-26 Thread Jonathon McKitrick
On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 11:45:06PM -0500, Matt Emmerton wrote:
: Given the cost of memory these days, swapping it out is generally cheaper
: than the cost of random downtime and recovering from crashes in a production
: environment.

I am *really* not a hardware guy.  I just had a box built and will deal with
hardware issues when I have to.  But I did turn the box off overnight, and
the build crashes went away.


jm
--
My other computer is your Windows box.
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Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Jonathon McKitrick

This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10, 11, and now
5.

Is this bad memory?


S -DYP  -c /usr/src/lib/libc/../libc/net/res_debug.c -o res_debug.o
cc -O -pipe  -DLIBC_RCS -DSYSLIBC_RCS -I/usr/src/lib/libc/include
-D__DBINTERFACE_PRIVATE -DINET6 -DPOSIX_MISTAKE
-I/usr/src/lib/libc/../libc/locale -DBROKEN_DES -DYP  -c
/usr/src/lib/libc/../libc/net/res_init.c -o res_init.o
cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 5
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src/lib/libc.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src/lib.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/src.
neptune# 

jm
-- 
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Lowell Gilbert
Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10, 11, and now
 5.
 
 Is this bad memory?

That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
test it.
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Adam Fabian
On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 08:16:23PM +, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
 Is this bad memory?

If you're not getting the same error every time, it's almost certainly
bad hardware, and memory is the most likely candidate.
-- 
Adam Fabian ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Jonathon McKitrick
On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
: Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
: 
:  This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10, 11, and now
:  5.
:  
:  Is this bad memory?
: 
: That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
: test it.

Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
somewhere else to get it tested?

jm
-- 
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RE: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Haulmark, Chris
Someone broke the silence: 

 On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
 Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
 11, and now 5. 
 
 Is this bad memory?
 
 That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
 test it.
 
 Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
 somewhere else to get it tested?
 
 jm

sysutils/memtest in the ports.

Chris Haulmark
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RE: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Chuck Robey
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Haulmark, Chris wrote:

 Someone broke the silence:

  On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
  Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
  11, and now 5.
 
  Is this bad memory?
 
  That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
  test it.
 
  Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
  somewhere else to get it tested?
 
  jm

 sysutils/memtest in the ports.

I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be said.
Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WORKING
MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!

Anyone who tells you otherwise is no friend of yours, because they are
making your life hard.  It's very alluring to assume that programs written
to do a job actually do that job, and most especially in the case of
memory test, one would *really* **REALLY** wish that Chuck here was lying,
cause you honestly need a memory test program, but the truth is otherwise:
memory test programs don't work.  At the very best, if they spend 30
minutes carefully exercising memory, you get a factor that is maybe 10%
reliable, and 90% wishful guessing.

With that in mind, sometimes, the very best memory test programs can give
you better ideas that memory you thought was failing IS failing.  The
opposite, proving that memory is good, is just totally, totally useless,
you cannot take any data home at all about your memory being good.



 Chris Haulmark
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Chuck Robey | Interests include C  Java programming, FreeBSD,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   | electronics, communications, and SF/Fantasy.

New Year's Resolution:  I will not sphroxify gullible people into looking up
fictitious words in the dictionary (on the wall at my old fraternity,
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Rob
Chuck Robey wrote:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Haulmark, Chris wrote:

Someone broke the silence:

On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
11, and now 5.
Is this bad memory?
That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
test it.
Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
somewhere else to get it tested?
jm
sysutils/memtest in the ports.

I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be said.
Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WORKING
MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!
What about the BIOS RAM test? I mean the counter that you can interrupt with
the ESC key, at the beginning of the boot process? Will that reliably indicate
problems with the RAM, or is that test also rubbish?
Rob.
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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Matt Emmerton
 On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Haulmark, Chris wrote:

  Someone broke the silence:
 
   On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
   Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  
   This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
   11, and now 5.
  
   Is this bad memory?
  
   That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
   test it.
  
   Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
   somewhere else to get it tested?
  
   jm
 
  sysutils/memtest in the ports.

 I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be said.
 Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WORKING
 MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!

 Anyone who tells you otherwise is no friend of yours, because they are
 making your life hard.  It's very alluring to assume that programs written
 to do a job actually do that job, and most especially in the case of
 memory test, one would *really* **REALLY** wish that Chuck here was lying,
 cause you honestly need a memory test program, but the truth is otherwise:
 memory test programs don't work.  At the very best, if they spend 30
 minutes carefully exercising memory, you get a factor that is maybe 10%
 reliable, and 90% wishful guessing.

 With that in mind, sometimes, the very best memory test programs can give
 you better ideas that memory you thought was failing IS failing.  The
 opposite, proving that memory is good, is just totally, totally useless,
 you cannot take any data home at all about your memory being good.

And it's for this very reason that I often keep a few extra sticks of memory
lying around my office.  When a system starts acting wonky (intermittent
crashes, especially under load like during a buildworld or heavy
spamassassin/razor activity), I take it offline, swap memory, and see if the
bad behaviour continues.  If it does, I'm no worse off than before.  If it
doesn't, I have a pretty good confidence level in saying that the memory was
bad.

While this method may seem somewhat brute-force-ish, it's often much quicker
and easier than futzing around with memtest and guessing.
Given the cost of memory these days, swapping it out is generally cheaper
than the cost of random downtime and recovering from crashes in a production
environment.

--
Matt Emmerton


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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Matt Emmerton
 Chuck Robey wrote:
  On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Haulmark, Chris wrote:
 
 
 Someone broke the silence:
 
 
 On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
 
 Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 
 This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
 11, and now 5.
 
 Is this bad memory?
 
 That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
 test it.
 
 Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
 somewhere else to get it tested?
 
 jm
 
 sysutils/memtest in the ports.
 
 
  I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be said.
  Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WORKING
  MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!

 What about the BIOS RAM test? I mean the counter that you can interrupt
with
 the ESC key, at the beginning of the boot process? Will that reliably
indicate
 problems with the RAM, or is that test also rubbish?

That just tests that the RAM is accessible (ie, electrical interface is
sound).

--
Matt Emmerton

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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Chuck Robey
On Fri, 26 Nov 2004, Rob wrote:

 Chuck Robey wrote:
  On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Haulmark, Chris wrote:
 
 
 Someone broke the silence:
 
 
 On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
 
 Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 
 This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
 11, and now 5.
 
 Is this bad memory?
 
 That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
 test it.
 
 Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
 somewhere else to get it tested?
 
 jm
 
 sysutils/memtest in the ports.
 
 
  I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be said.
  Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WORKING
  MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!

 What about the BIOS RAM test? I mean the counter that you can interrupt with
 the ESC key, at the beginning of the boot process? Will that reliably indicate
 problems with the RAM, or is that test also rubbish?

It's total rubbish, the only thing you can say is, it tells you that there
is a possiblity that the memory *might* be installed.  It's really more
helpful in the negative: if it tells you that you DON'T have memory, it's
confirming a problem, but that the memory is OK?  Utterly worthless.

This is a problem mainly because, well, you NEED the function, and it's so
convenient just to say hey, they wrote it to check memory, it wouldn't be
there otherwise.  Too bad that it's just totally a waste of your time.

Experienced hackers already know this sad news, I'm just posting this to
FreeBSD-questions, to the newbies who might otherwise be led astray.


 Rob.


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[EMAIL PROTECTED]   | electronics, communications, and SF/Fantasy.

New Year's Resolution:  I will not sphroxify gullible people into looking up
fictitious words in the dictionary (on the wall at my old fraternity,
Signa Phi Nothing).

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Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Chuck Robey
On Fri, 26 Nov 2004, Matt Emmerton wrote:

  Chuck Robey wrote:
   On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Haulmark, Chris wrote:
  
  
  Someone broke the silence:
  
  
  On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 04:05:53PM -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
  
  Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  
  
  This is what I get from make buildworld.  I've gotten signal 10,
  11, and now 5.
  
  Is this bad memory?
  
  That's a reasonable guess, but the only way to tell for sure is to
  test it.
  
  Is there a port to do this, or do I have to take it out and take it
  somewhere else to get it tested?
  
  jm
  
  sysutils/memtest in the ports.
  
  
   I don't want to embarrass anyone here, but something needs to be said.
   Note this next sentence carefully: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WORKING
   MEMORY TEST PROGRAM!!!
 
  What about the BIOS RAM test? I mean the counter that you can interrupt
 with
  the ESC key, at the beginning of the boot process? Will that reliably
 indicate
  problems with the RAM, or is that test also rubbish?

 That just tests that the RAM is accessible (ie, electrical interface is
 sound).

Got to be careful how you word it; it doesn't even mean that, cause there
are so many corner cases that memory needs to meet, really needs it, and
the electrical checks are unbelieveably thin.  I know YOU know that, but
we're writing for the newbies, they're going to take you at your words
here, and that check, it's so useless.

Something like looking at your car's fuel guage to tell if your car is
working.  If the fuel guage reads 3/4 full, it does't say much about the
state of your spark plugs, does it?  Unfortunately, that IS a fair
analogy.  Now, let the newbies read that one, it's accurate, far as it
goes.

You have to realize, newbies will guess, if you don't give them enough
data, they're not stupid, just ignorant, so be careful what sort of
guessing data you give them.


 --
 Matt Emmerton

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Chuck Robey | Interests include C  Java programming, FreeBSD,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   | electronics, communications, and SF/Fantasy.

New Year's Resolution:  I will not sphroxify gullible people into looking up
fictitious words in the dictionary (on the wall at my old fraternity,
Signa Phi Nothing).

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[OT] Re: Is this a sign of memory going bad?

2004-11-25 Thread Adam Fabian
Does parity RAM reliably report on it's reliability?

-- 
Adam Fabian ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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