Serendipitous computer repair

There was a thread not too long ago about computer memory; I
haven't bothered to try to dig it up; it was just a long
rambling discussion about error detection and stuff.

Well, this is a long ramble - maybe I should have signed
it as "The Plainclothes Hippie", as I'm quite euphoriated,
herbically, of course. A little alcohol can be quite
synergistic with the herb, of course.

But that notwithstanding, I have an [possibly] interesting
phenomenon to report here about computer memory. I have a
pentium of some kind - oh, dangit! There's Rich The Pedant...
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 4
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 996.479
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsrsyscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 1985.74
-----------

Oh, OK, it's an Athlon! Kewl!

Anyways, I was having no end of problems with Windoze - I've
got my firewall configured so that the Windoze (W2K, actually)
box can't even communicate with the internet - only the Samba
server.

And I kept thinking, "What's getting through, breaking my
system?"

And the one really, really annoying thing was that MDT6
(AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop, version 6 [la-dih-dah]) kept
breaking. I'd have to reinstall, and it'd be good for one
run. Then break.

But, I had set that aside for when I want to bother to take
notes and go seek out answers and all that crap - what I
have is "good enough" for now.

So, given that.

I was sitting musing about this memory stuff, and I remembered
that I have a couple of memory sticks on my shelf - long
story short, one of them is the same edge connector (3 bays -
short, medium, long) as the one that's in this computer, so
why am I not using it?

So I pull out the 256M stick, and plug in this other stick,
boot up to Linux, and free reports about 56 MB of memory. Oh!
Suddenly I remember why I had left it on the shelf. But, WTF,
I think to myself - why not, now that that one's working, just
slap in the other one and see what happens?

So I did. It booted, free in Linux reported >310MB (don't
remember the exact ... goddammit!
$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 312844 189672 123172 0 8780 33340
-/+ buffers/cache: 147552 165292
Swap: 1493960 236600 1257360
richgrise@thunderbird:~
$
-----------------
OK, 312844. How much more than 262,144 is that? I'm too lazy.

But, I haven't noticed any performance diffences in Linux, but
over in Doze-land, MDT6 hasn't died on startup since I installed
the new 56M or whatever it is. 48M? 49152? Whatever.

I accidentally fixed something that I didn't even know that
that was what would fix it.

Hope I don't dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the
back. ;-D

Cheers!
Rich

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Reply to Wolf
    ... "Memory" is a noun, and naive users of language therefore think it must ... you seem to be claiming that because human memory doesn't work ... like computer memory, we shouldn't call human memory memory. ... Conditioning is always "unconscious", even operant conditioning, ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • ZoneAlarm v4.5 eat my computer memory ! :-(
    ... ZoneAlarm v4.5.594.000 eat my computer memory! ... I am testing this firewall since yesterday, I wanted to test the so ... to Kerio firewall ?... ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • ZoneAlarm v4.5 eat my computer memory ! :-(
    ... ZoneAlarm v4.5.594.000 eat my computer memory! ... I am testing this firewall since yesterday, I wanted to test the so ... to Kerio firewall ?... ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web)
  • Suggestion: erase data posted to the Web
    ... "sensitive data" may persist in computer memory, ... As discussed earlier in Bugtraq ("When scrubbing secrets in memory doesn't ... Given the now common practice of leaving computers powered on with ... include the erasure and protection of "sensitive data". ...
    (Bugtraq)
  • Linux ELF loader vulnerabilities
    ... Numerous bugs have been found in the Linux ELF binary loader while ... Internally the Linux kernel uses a binary format loader layer to ... and the position of the memory map header in the binary image and ... An user may try to execute such a malicious binary with an unterminated ...
    (Bugtraq)