older computer onboard memory

[William R. Watt]

I have two 486DX/66's running plus a couple of motherboards with the same
CPU. They all have motherboard sockets for two banks of memory chips but
only one bank has memory chips installed in any of the motherboards. Just
out of curiosity would it be okay to move a bank of chips from one
motherboard to the empty bank on another? Would it increase the usable
onboard memory? Would the operating system take advantage of it? All of
the motherboards also have slots with memory cards. I've swapped
cards without any problem.

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[Charles Howse]

Previously William R. Watt <ag384@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote: I have two 486DX/66's running plus a couple of motherboards with the same CPU. They all have motherboard sockets for two banks of memory chips but only one bank has memory chips installed in any of the motherboards. Just out of curiosity would it be okay to move a bank of chips from one motherboard to the empty bank on another?

Try it. The only risk is that it does not work and that can be cured
by removing the memory again. You might want to run memtest86
(->google) for some hours to be sure the memory bus is not
overloaded.
Would it increase the usable onboard memory?

Likely.
Would the operating system take advantage of it?

Depends on the OS. Try and see what it reports. Note:
Older Windows versions have a 512MB limit. They work with
more but have problems.

Arno

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[Lost]

> Depends on the OS. Try and see what it reports. Note: Older Windows versions have a 512MB limit. They work with more but have problems.

I would like to know how to put that much memory in my old 486!

[Charles Howse]

Previously Lost <dev@null.no.spam.yeah> wrote: Depends on the OS. Try and see what it reports. Note: Older Windows versions have a 512MB limit. They work with more but have problems.
I would like to know how to put that much memory in my old 486!

That was a joke ;-)

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[MCheu]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:21:40 +1300, Lost <dev@null.no.spam.yeah>
wrote::
Depends on the OS. Try and see what it reports. Note: Older Windows versions have a 512MB limit. They work with more but have problems.I would like to know how to put that much memory in my old 486!

I don't know about your old 486. As the 486 era spanned a very long
time (in computer terms), there was a lot of variation in technology.
You could do it on some systems, but not on others.

Since later 486 boards typically had 2 or 3 SIMM slots, and 72pin
SIMMs *did* come in 256Meg size modules, you could plug two of those
in there. Assuming the chipset and BIOS supported that much RAM that
is.

In the case of earlier 486 boards --again, assuming ethe BIOS and
chipset supported it-- the 30pin SIMMs did come in 128Meg modules.
Those were expensive as heck at the time, as RAM was expensive to
begin with and these big ones were pretty rare. Most boards had 4
SIMM slots for memory, 2 for bank 0, 2 for bank 1. Since you had to
install the modules in pairs, 4x128 = 512.


----------------------------------------
Thanks,
MCheu

[William R. Watt]

mcheu (mpcheu@yahoo.com) writes:
Since later 486 boards typically had 2 or 3 SIMM slots, and 72pin SIMMs *did* come in 256Meg size modules, you could plug two of those in there. Assuming the chipset and BIOS supported that much RAM that is. In the case of earlier 486 boards --again, assuming ethe BIOS and chipset supported it-- the 30pin SIMMs did come in 128Meg modules. Those were expensive as heck at the time, as RAM was expensive to begin with and these big ones were pretty rare. Most boards had 4 SIMM slots for memory, 2 for bank 0, 2 for bank 1. Since you had to install the modules in pairs, 4x128 = 512.

of the 4 motherboards I'm looking at 2 have 8 short slots and
two have 4 short and 2 long slots. the short cards I have are 2 or 4 MB
each. the long cards have 7 MB each. that is what I calcualate from the
startup display and trying different combinations of cards.

all the boards have two banks of sockets for memory chips. two have the
jumper settings printed on the board so I can try different combinations.
it looks like both banks have to have the same capacity chips. I haven't
tried any different combinations of memory chips yet. Just looking so far.

I was at the local computer recycle depot yesterday where they just got a
bunch of scrapped 486's from a local college. I built my 486 from
neighbourhood discards and use it to scan stuff for my website, a bit of
web browsing, and to do some CAD boatbuilding as a hobby. The 486 is
adequate for this work. My workhorse computer which I use for word
processing, spreadsheets, a bit of programming, and text access to mail
and newsgroups is a 386SX I bought in 1990. Still works great. I'm not
interested in computer games or other forms of mulitmedia so the newer
computers aren't much interest. I did bring home a scrapped AMD Atheron?
with an Asus K7V motherboard out of curiosity to see what it looked like.
It has two very long 128MB memory cards in it. I like dissceting dead
things. :)

thanks for the info on these older machines

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[Guest]

"William R. Watt" wrote:
I have two 486DX/66's running plus a couple of motherboards with the same CPU. They all have motherboard sockets for two banks of memory chips but only one bank has memory chips installed in any of the motherboards. Just out of curiosity would it be okay to move a bank of chips from one motherboard to the empty bank on another? Would it increase the usable onboard memory? Would the operating system take advantage of it? All of the motherboards also have slots with memory cards. I've swapped cards without any problem.