finding out the size of old ram sticks

[Soviet Conscript]

well i've been wanting to upgrade my one old 486's ram from its 8mb (8x1 mb sticks) to something more.

anyways i've had no luck finding the 30 pin ram i need at a reasonable price so awhile ago i bough a big baggy full of random 30 pin ram for a good price. problem is i have no idea what size any stick it.

i've kinda been randomly putting the ram in to see what comes up, i almost always get a *beep* and nothing which i assume is ram error, sometimes it sounds like its botting up fine but i get no display and one i managed to get....1mb which means i found a good combo but all those sticks must of been 256k sticks.

anyways is there a device that can tell you how much ram is on a stick? or some visual method. it doesn't help these old MB's are picky about ram type/size combinations and what slots there in.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Uh, you shouldn't just stick random sticks in a computer, they may not be supported and might damage your RAM slots.

The best way is to look up the codes on the sticks themselves using Google. Most of the time you'll get hits from online RAM storefronts which list the product code, manufacturer, timing and voltage ratings. You can then use that info to find out which of those will fit on your motherboard.

[Soviet Conscript]

Uh, you shouldn't just stick random sticks in a computer, they may not be supported and might damage your RAM slots.

The best way is to look up the codes on the sticks themselves using Google. Most of the time you'll get hits from online RAM storefronts which list the product code, manufacturer, timing and voltage ratings. You can then use that info to find out which of those will fit on your motherboard.

i know its a bad habit but in 20+ plus years of doing that kinda trial and error i never had an issue where something burned out. and were talking putting in cpu's under the wrong voltage and plugging in AT PSU's incorrectly, i suppose i'm just lucky.

i'll try this but on alot of these ram sticks there very little info.

[Ze_ro]

Actually, you're probably pretty safe with 30-pin RAM, I don't think there were many different varieties there, and even if the timing isn't quite right, I don't think you're likely to damage anything. If you're really concerned, maybe find an old 386 board that's expendable. Keep in mind that a lot of motherboards require you to insert the RAM in matched pairs, so if you're just sticking random chips in all eight slots, it might have a hard time recognizing it, even if they're the same size. Even if your motherboard isn't as picky, if you have different sized RAM in two slots, it'll sometimes only recognize the smaller size (so if you have a 256k chip and a 1MB chip, it might just tell you that you have 512k).

Your best bet is to try to sort through your bag and try to find matching sets, and insert each set at a time to see what it is. Make sure you label them afterwards so you don't have to screw around with this again in the future!

As Kitsune mentioned, looking up part numbers on the internet is another way. Keep in mind when you look up individual chips, you'll have to count the chips on the memory itself, and spec sheets are notorious for using confusing notation when listing RAM sizes (like, they'll say 8 x 16k, and you won't be able to tell if the chip itself is 16 kilobytes (or maybe kiloBITS) and is meant to be in a set of 8, or whether the chip itself is 128k and has 8 divisions internally).

--Zero

[Soviet Conscript]

gone through most of them and the vast majority are 256k and 1mb sticks. the last couple seem to allude me though as i can't find any info.

blah, i never thought finding a measly 32mb of ram would be so hard.

[Jorpho]

Have you checked the manual of your 486's motherboard to see if there is actually some specific combination it will accept to get 32 MB of RAM? I doubt it will be as simple as two sticks of 16 or four sticks of 8, if it is possible at all. (32 was an awful lot of RAM in those days.)