MoBo not recognizing DIMM

[NDD]

It goes something with banking and memory chips, but from my experience : VX boards have difficulties with PC100 memory, not any DIMM will be recognized at full capacity, but PC66 will work fine http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
Try replacing the stick with another one of different make to see if it works right.

Best Regards ..

[DanU]

The problem isn't with the speed of the memory, but with the memory density. i430VX boards cannot use chips with > 16Mbit density. This effectively means that 32MB double-sided DIMMS are the largest DIMMS you can use. Sorry for the bad news, but there is nothing you can do to make a VX board recognize larger DIMMS.

[eespinosa]

I am writing this for a friend @ work. He has an Intel 430VX Mobo with a Pentium 100MHZ proc. He removed the SIMM modules and inserted a PNY 128MB pc100 DIMM. The motherboard recognizes only 32mb. Is there anything that he can do to make the mobo recognize the full amount?

[Peter M]

Back in the days those manuals were printed, 64-MByte DIMMs had 32 chips on them, each carrying 16 MBits.

The problem with today's DIMMs is not in the speed grade (SDRAM doesn't care if it's run slower than it technically can) - it's in the higher integration, the SDRAM chips being too large for the old chipset's SDRAM controller.

Today's higher integrated stuff is at least 64-MBit per chip, which i430VX can't handle. Depending on BIOS, those will either be completely ignored, or accepted and used within the limitations of the chipset.

The latter means you'll get 16 MBytes from a 64-MByte DIMM. Not what you want either - and it gets worse with larger DIMMs.

Bottom line, forget about using today's DIMMs with first-generation SDRAM chipsets like Intel 430VX, VIA Apollo VP-1 aka VXpro, or SiS 5571.

regards, Peter