Gee mon,
Has enough time elapsed so I can use the word battery again?
Since this is obviously a do-it-yourself, hands-on list, and ram chips are in
imminent danger of being handled, peered at, and relocated, as a favor, may I
ask Scott to consider this additional check:
If you have techtools; open the program and note the date that the SM was
manufactured. Mine says 8/12/01 because I deep-zapped the PRAM when I changed
my--dare I say it--battery.
If the cover is off, look at the top right section of the mother board. On my
machine, there is a small grey button on a tiny metal switch face called the
CUDA switch, which is located about 1 inch to the left of the top RAM slot..
Now pull the plug out of the back of the power supply if you haven't done that
already. Touch the metal structure of the SM to properly ground yourself and
drain away any static charge you may have acquired.
Then put the line plug back into the rear end of the power supply, but do not
try to start the machine from the keyboard or the front panel switch. Simply
put in only the power cord; nothing else.
To keep your hands out of the insides, take an ordinary pencil--or a chopstick
if you have one--and depress the CUDA button. Hold it down for about 10
seconds. It may click quietly, but it may not give you the best of clues as
it's having been depressed fully. If you are in doubt, try it again. (Please
don't poke yourself with the pointy end of the pencil; I'll get letters
accusing me of giving you lead poisoning.)
Now, start the machine from the keyboard or panel switch as usual. It should
start fine because it did before,and you're chasing intermittent freezes
occurring after apparently successful starts. If the freezes return, this fix
might not have worked and you can pursue the other avenues, but in any case
this was a quick test and probable fix if the problems lay in the PRAM and
involved a bad battery.
This test does not tell you the battery is good; that can only be checked with
a volt meter after the battery is physically removed. This is a short cut to
checking the battery and if PRAM has been corrupted, to resetting that PRAM
properly.
If the date of manufacture is more than 4 years old--and it should be--plan on
needing a new battery.
"There are only two kinds of Starmax owners; those who have changed their
batteries, and those who are about to."
Bob Wulkowicz
______________________________
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I've been thinking, do you think one of my RAM chips could have gone bad?
> After all, graphics intensive programs typically use up a lot of RAM, so do
> you think when it accesses the bad RAM that could cause the type of freeze
> I've described?
>
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> <<I'm struggling to figure out why my Starmax randomly freezes. Although
> usually it occurs with graphic (or RAM) intensive apps, sometimes it freezes
> for no reason...>>
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