BP6 Memory and IRQ questions

OS / Drivers / BIOS
Post Reply
baaden
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Aug 16, 2004 7:30 am

BP6 Memory and IRQ questions

Post by baaden »

Hi,

I have some problems trying to upgrade a BP6 based machine.
It has bi-Celeron 500 on it and currently 3x128 MB RAM.
I wanted to put eg 512 MB RAM, but when I put a 256 MB memory
bar in, it only recognizes 128 MB !! How comes people on the forum
indicate more than 384 MB memory for the BP6 board ? Is there a trick ?

Another (more annoying) problem are interrupts. My ethernet card
shares the same IRQ as the UDMA controller, which makes HD access
unstable. Is there any way to "rearrange" the IRQs via Linux ? Is there
another way ? (NB: before I had the NIC in another PCI slot where it
shared an IRQ with SCSI and soundcard .. in this setup the NIC does not
work at all !!)

Thanks for any hints,
MB
davd_bob
Confused
Posts: 1043
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 2:30 am
Location: Houston, TX

Post by davd_bob »

Welcome to the board.

The ram you tried is high density. The BP6 only recognizes a lower density ram type that is a little harder to find now...or a little more expensive.

They do make such ram in 256meg sticks but you have to make sure you verify any ram will work on the board before buying it. You cant tell by just looking at the ram stick if it is high density or not.

Can anyone give an easy way to tell the difference between the ram types? Id like to know too.
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
Athlon 2800
Sempron 2000
ViaCPU laptop with Vista.(Works great after bumping ram to 2Gig)
P-III 850@100
lungster
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Dec 12, 2002 12:41 pm

Post by lungster »

davd_bob wrote: Can anyone give an easy way to tell the difference between the ram types? Id like to know too.
I think the low density 256MB sticks are double sided. At least mine is !
Stobe
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:01 am
Location: .fi

Post by Stobe »

Here's a good site containing information about suitable memory for the BX chipset:

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/ram_bx_faq.html
Sto be or not Sto be, that is not even a question...
BCN
Posts: 508
Joined: Tue Nov 26, 2002 9:50 am
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Contact:

Post by BCN »

it is doublesided and it has to be with 8 chips on each side :)
Dual C366@550MHz 1.90V :) (History)
yet single PIII-S 512Kb L2 cache at 1400MHz@700MHz
BP6 (not modded yet)
256MB PC133 C2
GF4Ti4200-8x
Maxtor 2x60Gb - all on promise ATA133
Lite-On LTR 40125S@48125W!!!
Plus P4 system
purrkur
Linux Guru
Posts: 687
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:57 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: BP6 Memory and IRQ questions

Post by purrkur »

baaden wrote:Another (more annoying) problem are interrupts. My ethernet card shares the same IRQ as the UDMA controller, which makes HD access unstable. Is there any way to "rearrange" the IRQs via Linux ? Is there another way ? (NB: before I had the NIC in another PCI slot where it shared an IRQ with SCSI and soundcard .. in this setup the NIC does not work at all !!)
You don't mention what NIC you are using which is bad!

There are three different things that you might be able to do in order to change IRQ's on your system for different cards:

1. Some manufacturers (like 3Com) provide configuration utilities (floppies which you boot from) so that you can internally assign a new IRQ address to the card.

2. You can move it to a different PCI place. You have already done that but you might consider rearranging more than one PCI card.

3. Some Linux drivers are able to accept input parameters when they are loaded, such as I/O address and IRQ numbers when they are loaded.

But again, you don't provide any info on your card so I cannot be more specific. Knowing your distro and kernel would also help.
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
hugoc
Posts: 106
Joined: Wed Mar 26, 2003 2:00 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Post by hugoc »

Duplicate information - post deleted.
BP6, RU BIOS, 2*Celeron 366@550 1.9v
2*GlobalWin FEP32, 512MB PC100 CAS2
GeForce DDR, CMI8738 audio, Accton SMC2-1211TX NIC
Ubuntu Linux, Kernel 2.6.8.1-4-686-smp
davd_bob
Confused
Posts: 1043
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 2:30 am
Location: Houston, TX

Post by davd_bob »

BCN wrote:it is doublesided and it has to be with 8 chips on each side :)
not totally accurate.
I have 3 sticks in my recently reassembeled bp6. 2 of them have chips on both sides but on has chips on only one side. All 3 are 128 meg and the system finds all 384 meg.
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
Athlon 2800
Sempron 2000
ViaCPU laptop with Vista.(Works great after bumping ram to 2Gig)
P-III 850@100
Wolfram
Posts: 401
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2002 3:19 am
Location: Germany

Post by Wolfram »

davd_bob wrote:
BCN wrote:it is doublesided and it has to be with 8 chips on each side :)
not totally accurate.
I have 3 sticks in my recently reassembeled bp6. 2 of them have chips on both sides but on has chips on only one side. All 3 are 128 meg and the system finds all 384 meg.
8 chips each side for 256 MB sticks. Btw., I recently found my BP6 to become unstable with three 256MB sticks. Totally stable with two. Some caps aren't 100% ok anymore, maybe that's why...
BP6, RU BIOS, XP SP3, ACPI, 2x366@523(1,95V), Pentalpha HS + 1x 12cm fan @5V, 768MB, Powercolor Geforce 3, RTL8139D NIC, Terratec EWS64L, Samsung M40 80GB (2,5''), LiteOn CDRW
davd_bob
Confused
Posts: 1043
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 2:30 am
Location: Houston, TX

Post by davd_bob »

Wolfram wrote:
davd_bob wrote:
BCN wrote:it is doublesided and it has to be with 8 chips on each side :)
not totally accurate.
I have 3 sticks in my recently reassembeled bp6. 2 of them have chips on both sides but on has chips on only one side. All 3 are 128 meg and the system finds all 384 meg.
8 chips each side for 256 MB sticks. Btw., I recently found my BP6 to become unstable with three 256MB sticks. Totally stable with two. Some caps aren't 100% ok anymore, maybe that's why...
my bad,
thanks

Wolfram, you can send me all your extra 256 megs if you can only use 2
(haha)
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
Athlon 2800
Sempron 2000
ViaCPU laptop with Vista.(Works great after bumping ram to 2Gig)
P-III 850@100
Post Reply