N00b with 486 & RAM Problems

Techtoucian · 20th October 2004, 8:27 PM

Right. I've got myself an old 486 of some sort sitting here. It's a beautiful Compaq machine that my sister bought back in the day, and I'm trying to get Debian onto it. Problem is that it's got 8 meg of ram, and Debian wants at least 12.

I assumed adding another 8 meg of ram would be easy, but I've hit a bump. Thing is, I got it in, and it ran for a while, say half an hour. Then when trying to reboot, it just wouldn't start up again. Now, no matter which additional stick of ram I put in (I've got four, and at last check, all work), it will not boot with it. It works fine with the original 8 meg, but whenever I put in an extra stick it starts testing it in POST, but the screen goes blank whenever it reaches it. I'm really distressed, because I'm a great big newbie, and I want to get it all working nicely. So essentially, is there something I'm missing? Has anyone had the same problem, or what? I'm just lost. :-D

Failing this, can anyone suggest a distro that I can boot from floppy, then install over the network? This machine has no optical drive.

Deeman · 20th October 2004, 10:31 PM

486's can be a bitch.

They may:

Require parity RAM, in which case - good luck finding that these days.
Require matched pairs (another 2 x 8MB sticks, or whatever)
Require jumpers to be set to identify the memory size to the motherboard.

They're horribly fickle when it comes to RAM - you might need to pull up the details from Compaq's support site to see what you can lean... good luck!

Techtoucian · 21st October 2004, 3:42 PM

Ok ,I took your advice (Completely didn't think about this before), and rummaged through the documentation for this machine. It actually has a book on upgrading the ram, but it doesn't go into specifics other than the maximum amout of ram it can take etc. It's a bit frustrating because it still doesn't give me any idea what's wrong.
Another thing, is it likely that it would work for a short period, then stop working? Could that indicate something? :-?

Edit: I also did a bit of googling, but nothing came up. The compaq site seems mighty hollow now.

20th October 2004, 8:27 PM	#1
Techtoucian Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Brisbane Posts: 485	N00b with 486 & RAM Problems Right. I've got myself an old 486 of some sort sitting here. It's a beautiful Compaq machine that my sister bought back in the day, and I'm trying to get Debian onto it. Problem is that it's got 8 meg of ram, and Debian wants at least 12. I assumed adding another 8 meg of ram would be easy, but I've hit a bump. Thing is, I got it in, and it ran for a while, say half an hour. Then when trying to reboot, it just wouldn't start up again. Now, no matter which additional stick of ram I put in (I've got four, and at last check, all work), it will not boot with it. It works fine with the original 8 meg, but whenever I put in an extra stick it starts testing it in POST, but the screen goes blank whenever it reaches it. I'm really distressed, because I'm a great big newbie, and I want to get it all working nicely. So essentially, is there something I'm missing? Has anyone had the same problem, or what? I'm just lost. :-D Failing this, can anyone suggest a distro that I can boot from floppy, then install over the network? This machine has no optical drive. __________________ THIS POST IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES ARE DISCLAIMED. [ Ash is a Brisbane Wordpress Developer ]

21st October 2004, 3:42 PM	#3
Techtoucian Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Brisbane Posts: 485	Ok ,I took your advice (Completely didn't think about this before), and rummaged through the documentation for this machine. It actually has a book on upgrading the ram, but it doesn't go into specifics other than the maximum amout of ram it can take etc. It's a bit frustrating because it still doesn't give me any idea what's wrong. Another thing, is it likely that it would work for a short period, then stop working? Could that indicate something? :-? Edit: I also did a bit of googling, but nothing came up. The compaq site seems mighty hollow now. __________________ THIS POST IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES ARE DISCLAIMED. [ Ash is a Brisbane Wordpress Developer ] Last edited by Techtoucian; 21st October 2004 at 3:43 PM.

20th October 2004, 10:31 PM	#2
Deeman Back on the grid. Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Melbourne Posts: 8,765	486's can be a bitch. They may: Require parity RAM, in which case - good luck finding that these days. Require matched pairs (another 2 x 8MB sticks, or whatever) Require jumpers to be set to identify the memory size to the motherboard. They're horribly fickle when it comes to RAM - you might need to pull up the details from Compaq's support site to see what you can lean... good luck!