Re: How do I test memory failure?

In article <cK9He.6192$Tr6.5152@lakeread02>, Rick <beachmonk@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

> I am continuing to have total freezes on my beige g3 tower upgraded to a
> 466 through a zif card, maxed out RAM at 700 something. I have a third
> party USb card and a video card with maxed out 6 MB of ram.
>
> I have 2 hard drives each with 3 partitions. One 80GB in parts at 8GB
> (OS 10 with 8 MB avail), 6 GB (back up of OS 9 clean), and 60 GB for
> document storage. One 30 GB in parts at 6 GB with my old OS 9 and 22 GB
> (document storage) and 2 GB for CD burning. I keep this second because I
> run my xclaim TV module through it because I can't get enough video ram
> on the box to run it while OS 10 is working. I don't need all three
> partitions on this second HD but I have been lazy about cleaning it all
> over to the 80 GB HD.
>
> It has been consistently freezing for a VERY long time. Some days not at
> all and others like today, every 30-60 minutes of use. It occurs
> primarily using Netscape or IE and also during use of Xclaim TV adapter
> running on OS9 partitioned on a separate HD from OS 10.
>
> I have read that this is most often due to hardware not software and it
> does happen with different operations so I conclude the same. I want to
> test my memory chips first then will take any other suggestions that
> might help.
>
> I am not a wiz at this but I can follow directions.
>
> All thoughts are appreciated.
>
> Rick

Use memtest to test RAM
<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17156>
It will require you to run from the terminal, but it does a very good
job of testing memory.

>From a Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) drag and drop
the memtest file onto the terminal window. You will get a messages such
as:

Memtest version 4.11 (32-bit)
Copyright (C) 2004 Charles Cazabon
Copyright (C) 2004, 2005 Tony Scaminaci (Macintosh port)
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 only

ERROR: Amount of memory to be tested (argument 2) is missing.
Relaunch with memory test size in MB or 'all'.

Hit the up-arrow
Add a space and the word "all" to the end of the memtest command, so it
looks something like:

/some/place/memtest all

hit carriage return. Go to lunch, dinner, or even bed. The test will
run forever, making multiple passes over the available memory. You can
scroll back the window to see previous passes and if there were any
errors reported.

It takes as long as it takes, depending on how fast your CPU is and how
much memory you have.

Best if you have very few applications running so that more of your
memory can be tested. It does not test memory being used for programs,
so exit as many programs as you can to allow more memory to be tested.

Now other ideas. You say your hangs occur most frequently when using
Netscape and IE. While excessive, I've experienced what appears to be
hangs when network programs experience networking problems. Either DNS
lookup or a site that does not respond.

So how good has your network been?

Have you noticed any specific sites where you seem to hang more often?

Do you know if there is any funny content? Flash, javascript, etc...
As an experiment you could try diabling these extensions in your browser
preferences (assuming Netscape and IE have options to do this).

You could try alternative browsers. Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, OmniWeb,
iCab, again, just as an experiment.

And one more thing. The other bit of hardware that seems to cause
problems is USB devices. Do you have more than just the keyboard and
mouse? If so, can you (as an experiment) remove the extras and maybe
any hubs. Even your USB card, although if this system did not
originally have USB, and that is how your get Mac OS X to boot, I fully
understand keeping it in the system :-)

If you do not find anything, see if you can experimentally use a
different keyboard and mouse. I remember a case a few months back where
it was the mouse that caused the problems. The OP in that case was
happy because we guessed right about the mouse maybe being the problem,
and 2nd because he now had a multi-button mouse :-)

Good luck.

Bob Harris
.

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