Got a customer that wants to run 4GB in his Alphaserver 1200

That would be 8 x 512MB DIMMS as there are 8 memory slots in the
Alphaserver 1200

Has anyone tried using PC100 ECC 512MB DIMMs???

I don't have an Alphaserver 1200 here any longer for us to test this. We
do have PWS that use the same memory

but 4GB.. not possible

Anyone care to enlighten me???

David

On 03/09/22 22:27, David Turner wrote:
> Got a customer that wants to run 4GB in his Alphaserver 1200
>
> That would be 8 x 512MB DIMMS as there are 8 memory slots in the
> Alphaserver 1200
>
> Has anyone tried using PC100 ECC 512MB DIMMs???
>
> I don't have an Alphaserver 1200 here any longer for us to test this. We
> do have PWS that use the same memory
>
> but 4GB.. not possible
>
> Anyone care to enlighten me???
>
>
> David
>

4Gb is 32 bits, right ?. You may find that it will work but was never
supported by dec/compaq/hp. For early Alphas, 64Mb simms were
typical at the time, so the machines msy not have been tested
with much larger anyway.

Not sure about pc100, but typical Alpha memory was fast page
mode registered ecc, 3.3v, which was a bit oddball even back
then. Check the spec for the machine first, then see what's
available from the add on memory vendors...

Chris

On 3/9/2022 5:27 PM, David Turner wrote:
> Got a customer that wants to run 4GB in his Alphaserver 1200
>
> That would be 8 x 512MB DIMMS as there are 8 memory slots in the
> Alphaserver 1200
>
> Has anyone tried using PC100 ECC 512MB DIMMs???
>
> I don't have an Alphaserver 1200 here any longer for us to test this. We
> do have PWS that use the same memory
>
> but 4GB.. not possible
>
> Anyone care to enlighten me???

I have no idea about the answer to the question.

But I can't but wonder how much money is saved by
spending lots of hours investigating this question,
buying some money and test if it works compared to
just buying a DS25 with 4GB which everybody know
will work.

I know - the customer is always right. :-)

Arne

Yep
But it's for a US Govt entity - they have extremely limited budgets
I am doing research for them for free
Hopefully savinf many $100000's of tax payer's money

DT

On 3/9/2022 8:57 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 3/9/2022 5:27 PM, David Turner wrote:
>> Got a customer that wants to run 4GB in his Alphaserver 1200
>>
>> That would be 8 x 512MB DIMMS as there are 8 memory slots in the
>> Alphaserver 1200
>>
>> Has anyone tried using PC100 ECC 512MB DIMMs???
>>
>> I don't have an Alphaserver 1200 here any longer for us to test this.
>> We do have PWS that use the same memory
>>
>> but 4GB.. not possible
>>
>> Anyone care to enlighten me???
>
> I have no idea about the answer to the question.
>
> But I can't but wonder how much money is saved by
> spending lots of hours investigating this question,
> buying some money and test if it works compared to
> just buying a DS25 with 4GB which everybody know
> will work.
>
> I know - the customer is always right. :-)
>
> Arne
>

On Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 2:27:58 PM UTC-8, David Turner wrote:
> Got a customer that wants to run 4GB in his Alphaserver 1200
Seems this question came up before:

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms/c/V0faoa3B2C0/m/e7pCLZH5CQAJ

I think it says that 4GB is fine, but I am not so sure.

On Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 5:27:58 PM UTC-5, David Turner wrote:
> Got a customer that wants to run 4GB in his Alphaserver 1200
>
> That would be 8 x 512MB DIMMS as there are 8 memory slots in the
> Alphaserver 1200
>
> Has anyone tried using PC100 ECC 512MB DIMMs???
>
> I don't have an Alphaserver 1200 here any longer for us to test this. We
> do have PWS that use the same memory
>
> but 4GB.. not possible
>
> Anyone care to enlighten me???
>
>
> David
David,

A word of caution concerning documentation, and, for that matter testing.

The documentation may, in effect, be incorrect. The Alphaserver 1200 documentation was likely written before the larger capacity chips were available. Have had this with disk drives and with memory slots. Both ways (some things worked, and some did not). In recent history, my Dell Latitude 6000-class laptop documentation says "maximum 8GB RAM", but it is quite happily running with 16GB. However, my Alphastations do not have the cooling capacity to deal with some of the 3.5" inch disks, I was warned.

Also, if testing, one should be careful to actually test the expanded memory. Some problems show up as address overmaps, which can cause, to put it politely,challenges.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

On Thursday, March 10, 2022 at 12:21:21 AM UTC-8, geze...@rlgsc.com wrote:

(snip)

> A word of caution concerning documentation, and, for that matter testing.
> The documentation may, in effect, be incorrect. The Alphaserver 1200 documentation was likely written before the larger capacity chips were available. Have had this with disk drives and with memory slots. Both ways (some things worked, and some did not). In recent history, my Dell Latitude 6000-class laptop documentation says "maximum 8GB RAM", but it is quite happily running with 16GB. However, my Alphastations do not have the cooling capacity to deal with some of the 3.5" inch disks, I was warned.
In the case of DIMMs, there are/were some that are two sided, which means that
they use two select lines, not necessarily that chips are on both sides.
Some systems needed one kind and not the other.

Both disks and RAM could use more power and overheat, but also later
models will often use less power, and so that goes away.

Or some RAM might have more capacitance load than the system was
designed to drive. But again, that might go away with later models.

> Also, if testing, one should be careful to actually test the expanded memory. Some problems show up as address overmaps, which can cause, to put it politely,challenges.
>
> - Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com