SUMMARY: How do I know which SIMM to pull?

From: John E. Ivory (ivory@tower.com)
Date: Tue Aug 27 1996 - 09:21:15 CDT


My machine was pooping out with a parity error, and I was not certain
which SIMM I needed to replace. Within an hour I started getting
messages back from the gurus of this group. Amazing.

Basically, the answer was right in front of me... the message in the
console tole me that...
> bad module/chip at: U676 <<======== ??

The Uxxx numbers are silk-screened right onto the mother board itself.
More than one of the people listed below went so far as to open their
FE manuals and such, and give me very clear directions on how to find it
(thank you very much). A special thanks to Jens Fischer, who helped
me understand how the banks are arranged, which let me know if this
was a 1 or 4 Mb SIMM.

Since the machine actually panic'd out a few times, I popped the lid,
pulled the SIMM, did the erasor trick to the contacts, dusted things off
in general, and put it back together. No sign of problems since then.
My fingers remain crossed.

Other bits of wisdom worth repeating...
> Before you replace it, though, try just removing it, blowing some
> compressed air in there, and then replacing it. Just reseating the
> SIMM fixes it most of the time, I've found.
........
> But be advised that the bad SIMM should be replaced as soon as
> possible. The machine has automatically locked out this chip so it
> won't be used, but it will be operating in a degraded mode until it
> (the bad SIMM) has been replaced.
........
> Before you go swapping out simms, try rebooting first. We've had
> similar problems here and it's rarely resulted in a bad simm. A reboot
> usually takes care of it.

            popp@luey.redars.ca.boeing.com .
         bushman@comswsys.tinkernet.af.mil . My very sincere
         celeste@celestial.stokely.com . thanks are offered
        springer@aitsun500.tcinc.com . to each of the people
           werth@bns101.cs.lmco.com . listed here. I'm
             tgm@eng.dowjones.com . humbled by your
        cbarnard@cs.uchicago.edu . generousity and
        hbreeder@nl.oracle.com . knowledge.
 maryellen.yager@eng.sun.com .
         dzambon@afit.af.mil .
           dhaut@level1.com .
            jefi@kat.ina.de .
           twite@bear.com .
           benji@hnt.com .

----------------------------------------------- ________ -------------------
John E. Ivory 103 Sylvan Way / ___ ___ ___
ivory@tower.com New Hartford, NY 13413 / / / | /| / /_ /__/
                       V: 315-724-3540 / /__/ |/ |/ /__ / \
http://www.tower.com F: 315-724-3129 C O N C E P T S , I N C

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