Tyan S1680 MOBO - Adding SIMMs

[SOM]

I'm trying to breathe a little extra life into my son's computer which has a Tyan S1680 Pentium II PCI-ISA (1997) mobo with an Intel 440FX chipset and is running at 266 mHz. It only has 64MB of memory so I thought I would add another 64MB to improve things a bit. Unfortunately the SIMM banks are right underneath the casings for the hard drives and almost impossible to get at. The short story is that I broke one of the small springy things at the end that help snap the modules into place.

My question: Is it okay to just ignore that bank and put the new SIMMs into the next two banks? This would mean that banks 1,2,4, and 5 would be populated, 1,2 with original SIMMs and 4,5 with the new store-bought SIMMS.

I have searched this BB database and did not really find an answer. Any help would be appreciated.

SOM

I have put this under the Motherboard forum instead. Sorry, but could not delete topic.

[This message has been edited by SOM (edited 04-30-2001).]

[Nighthawk]

No, that's not going to work. Your memory controller will see that as two half-filled banks and not one fully-filled bank.

Your SIMM socket will work without that snap guide, as long as the other one is there. It will also work if that socket is in the middle of the others and the others are really close. That tab is just there to make sure that the SIMM doesn't fall out or lose electrical connectivity with the rest of the board.

[SOM]

Thanks for the information Nighthawk (Tech Support Forum) and Fingers (Motherboards Forum).

I put the two SIMMs in Bank 2, skipping Bank 1 that has the broken snap guide. This is the memory configuration now:

Bank 0 = SIMM #1 & #2
Bank 1 = SIMM Empty
Bank 2 = SIMM #5 & #6
Bank 3 = SIMM Empty

So, Bank 0 and Bank 2 are populated and everything is working great. Memory check at boot-up confirms the computer recognizes the additional memory and says it is okay. Memory is reported as 128MB in the "My Computer" properties when running Windows 98SE.

Thanks again for all your helpful advice.

SOM