On Fri, May 04, 2001, William Leese wrote: > > I need to replace a dual PIII-600MHz motherboard, which apparently got > > fried. I'd appreciate any suggestions for a good, Linux friendly one. > > Preferably something which can make use of ECC memory, which the dead > > one (i840 chipset) couldn't. > > one of those things i was going to look into put never got around to. whats > the difference between SDRAM and ECC SDRAM? >
Hi, ECC (Error Correction Code) has an additional 9th bit for every 8 data bits to catch and correct certain errors (though I've heard it is designed more to catch the relatively rare stray bit flip errors, like from passing cosmic rays, than the nasty errors that result from dying memory, but I don't know the full story). So normal SDRAM is for example 32Mx64 (for 256Mb module), while ECC SDRAM is 32Mx72 (for same 256Mb with ECC capabilities). In many cases you can get ECC capabilities for maybe $8-10 more for a 256Mb module, in which case I think it's a good investment. Note, though, that I've heard Athlon doesn't play well with ECC, though it remains to be seen if this will be improved for the Dual Athlons (as it should be); again, hopefully, others can add more. Hope this helps and take care, Daniel -- Daniel A. Freedman Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics Department of Physics Cornell University
