MEM on ASUS

[buddy_y]

I have a ASUS board P3C-E rev 1.xx with 2 sticks of 256 mem Belarc Advisor says I have and empty slot can I put a 127 mem stick in that slot without causing problems as I have two sticks of 127 laying here Processor is PENT 3 800 megs 32kb prim. 256 kb sec running XP/sp1 2600 & a geforce MX 100/200 vid card

[bigjackusa]

You mean 128mb sticks, right? Some mobos have a problem with all the memory banks filled unless you use registered ram, which I doubt is what you have. Other times problems arrise when the sticks are not identical. We already know that the capacity is different. What about the brand, single/double sided, speed, timing, etc.? You can try it and see if it works. It shouldn't hurt any of your hardware. The worst it could do is scramble windows.

[buddy_y]

well in this case i think bel-arc advisor is wrong i opened my puter up and there are only two slots for mem. so i went and checked it on evga it also said i had three slots i downloaded a nother checker it said three, anybody have any idea what these programs could be reading . when i looked at my board i could only find one slot that was empty its only about 1\8th the size of the memory slots and is located about half way across the board from the mem. i looked at this slot with a mag. glass and could find no writing or symbols on it i have no idea what it is. my puter runs ok, i just would like to fix things that are not right something must be crossed somewhere to give me a reading for three slots when there are only two. this puter shop in town don't no how to fix any thing, they just want to sell you a new one.any body have any advise..... i could use it . THANKS

[bigjackusa]

Now you've got me really curious. I'm on my backup machine right now and I decided to run Belarc Advisor on it as I haven't used Belarc in a while. I'm attaching a pic from the results displaying the memory in the machine. It doesn't tell me how many ram sockets I have. (I have 3 total, 2 filled.) How does it tell you that you have empty sockets?

Ahha! I tried again and went to the "buy more" section. What appears on that page is an example, not what is in your computer.

[bigjackusa]

Like a bolt from the blue a thought popped into my head. You didn' say, but I bet that you have a factory built machine. Many times major builders will order stripped down versions of components to cut costs. None of the utilities you used actually examined your mobo for the number of mem slots, they just IDed the mobo from the bios and looked up the number of slots in a table. The number is incorrect as your mobo is not standard, but stripped down. Let me know if it is a factory machine if you will.

[buddy_y]

no it is not a factory machine , the place on Belarc that im reading says Memory Modules c,d 512 meg.installed mem. Slot 'RIMM 1' has 256 MB Slot 'RIMM 2' has 256 MB. Slot 'RIMM 3' is Empty now i may be reading this wrong as for as the slots go but it appears to me that i should have three slots for MEM. I found anoghter program simeler to belarc that said the same thing this board only has two.

[bigjackusa]

I hadn't been able to get on Asus site for some reason (browser says it sends request, but nothing loads!). But now I see that the board uses rdram. Mem slots for rdram come in pairs and all have to be filled either with ram sticks or crimms. So three slots seems sort of impossible. It would need to be 2 or 4. I used Google to find some old reviews of the board and all of them say 2 slots. So now I have no clue! Another unsolved mystery of the universe.

[buddy_y]

so now back to my problem did i cross something up when i changed boards to get this reading slot 3 rimm is empty. i no for a fact there are only two slots im sitting here looking at it (my glasses are dirty but not that dirty)

[bigjackusa]

No, you didn't cross anything up. I am sure that you couldn't create the misreport even if you tried on purpose. There is nothing that I have ever heard of that could be changed by the user that could do that.

[buddy_y]

thanks that makes me fell better ill put the case back on and try this. the board was free and seems faster than what i was using if it dont work i guess i'll have to spend some money that i don't have.