Firefox/4.0b8pre SeaMonkey/2.1b2pre   
   From: Dave Yeo    
      
   Doug Bissett wrote:   
   > On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:57:17 UTC, Lars Erdmann   
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >> Doug Bissett wrote:   
   >>> On Fri, 26 Nov 2010 07:28:07 UTC, Lars Erdmann   
   >>> wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> It is so cheap, I think it does   
   >>>> not even have the ECC feature.   
   >>>   
   >>> 99% of the memory that exists, in modern hardware, doesn't have the   
   >>> ECC feature. Memory, today, is reliable enough that it is not needed,   
   >>> and the only reason to actually use ECC memory is for "mission   
   >>> critical" applications (life support systems etc.). The really cheap   
   >>> memory would not have the parity bit, but memory is cheap enough now,   
   >>> that I doubt if you could find such a thing.   
   >> Ok, did not know that.   
   >>   
   >>> On the other hand, I am somewhat surprised that a machine would serve   
   >>> up a parity error, because the BIOS startup, even without the extended   
   >>> memory test, is supposed to write a pattern to the memory, before it   
   >>> boots.   
   >>>   
   >> Yes, but if "Quick Power On Self Test" is enabled it will only do that   
   >> for the DOS relevant memory region of<= 1MB.   
   >> If you disable, it will do that for the whole memory (supposedly).   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> Lars   
   >   
   > I am pretty sure that the BIOS is supposed to write good data through   
   > all of memory, even if you do the quick test. The reason for doing   
   > that, is to prevent exactly what you are describing. There may be many   
   > reasons why the BIOS may not clean all memory, or, you may have a bad   
   > memory chip in there somewhere. Then it is possible that the   
   > manufacturer was attempting to speed up boot, and dropped that from   
   > the BIOS (poor decision, if they did).   
   >   
   > I am also under the impression that OS/2 itself initializes all of   
   > memory during boot, so you should never see that sort of thing anyway.   
   >   
   > I think I would find a memory test program, and see what it has to say   
   > about the problem.   
   >   
      
   I tried a bad SIMM a while ago. The BIOS accepted it fine. Both OS/2 and    
   Win2k just ignored it and Linux crashed. Memtest showed one stuck bit. I    
   think I was just using the quick memory test so the BIOS can miss bad    
   memory.   
   Dave   
      
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