I'm sure anyone who has experience with this will know this already, and many might even say "I'd told you so", but I'd like to confirm that using PC133 CL3 ECC RAM in a G4 QS2002 -- DOES NOT WORK.
I was suspicious that I might be able to use one stick of non-ECC RAM and then the other two sticks of ECC and that the motherboard ram controller might somehow see the non-ECC RAM and just work. Well it doesn't. No combination tested so far allows any of the ECC RAM to work in the machine. Adding just one stick, in any order, with or without non-ECC RAM prevents the machine in booting. For kicks I tried the ECC RAM in a blue-and-white G4 (not sure if it was 350Mhz or 450Mhz) -- zilch. Didn't work either. I had been a bit hopeful because I found online someone's comment that they had used ECC ram in their G4 Cube successfully. Also I have noticed that in my G4 QS2002 that if I used three sticks of CL2 memory the machine was crashing but that if I put that same CL2 memory in with one stick of CL3 the machine apparently slowed down all the memory access and I had no problems then with that CL2 memory. Anyway... thought that documenting this clear test might help somebody some grief someday. I tried ECC sticks from Micron, Samsung, and one or two others. None worked. The irony is that when it was new ECC memory was more expensive and now, apparently because so many servers have been decommissioned, the used RAM market has much cheaper ECC memory than the non-ECC. Now if someone can come up with a hack to let me de-solder part of the ECC stick to turn it into a non-ECC... that would be fantastic! -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
