256mb sdram only shows up as 126mb

[Guest]

I recently bought a stick of 256mb pc133 sdram to put in a new athlon system I am building. I uninstalled the pc100 (192mb) sdram from my Gateway G6-450 Pentium 2, and installed the new 256mb pc133 sdram, just to test it's affect on that pc. However, on bootup, a screen came up that said the amount of RAM was lowered. It seems that the pc is only recognizing 126mb of the pc133 sdram. Is the stick defective or do I need to reconfigure something so the pc will recognize the whole amount? Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

[Guest]

Do not take this as gospel as i am only hypothesising. I think some motherboards (maybe all) have limit on how much ram they can hold.
ie the Gateway mobo must not be able to handle more than 128mb

Try checking the mobo manual.

 

[Guest]

Hi and thanks for the help. I checked the manual and the motherboard is supposed to support up to 384mb. I uninstalled the 256mb pc133 and installed a 128mb of pc133 and got the same result. The pc only seems to see 126mb. I still haven't figured out why.

 

[Crashman]

It might be limmited to 128MB PER SLOT! That would explain everything. Try using the 128 in the first slot and the 256 in the second and see if it reads 256 total (128 per slot).

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Hello. Thanks for the help and of course you are right. I looked (AGAIN!) at the online manual for the motherboard, and sure enough, 128mb is the largest dimm it will support. I know I must have looked (overlooked, I guess)right at that at least 5 times before coming here. Thanks again.

 

[Crashman]

Gald I could help.

Suicide is painless...........