can i mix two memory types?

[XaosIII]

im replacing my friends old 800 Celeron mobo/processor with the ECS K5S7A (the cheap/popular one) and an Athlon XP 1600+... However, im suing the old PC133 memory. One of them is ECC. I dont know if the motherboard accepts ECC, even if it does. Is it safe to mix one ECC stick, and one non-ECC stick? i believe my friends motherboard MAY have gotten damaged becuase he mixed two different memory types on a motherboard that wasnt compatible with ECC (the ECC ram has been there for around a year, till they turned it on and it stopped working one day, though it COULD be something else)

 

[Buz2b]

You can mix ECC and non-ECC RAM in most cases. The ECC will not function as intended (error checking) but will work fine otherwise. The problem may be with the MB (K7S5A). It can, at times be a picky about RAM. Many moons ago (board revisions), there were some that had success using ECC and others that did not. I really don't remember the particulars of it at this time. It will not harm the MB though, so you can certainly try it. The only bad thing that will happen is that the board won't boot with the ECC or most likely it will just not recognise that stick. If I were you, I'd boot the board with the "regular" stick of RAM first, just to make sure all is well. Then shut down and install the ECC stick and boot again. If the boot process starts correctly, which it should, just keep your eye out for the amount of RAM that is recognised during this sequence. That's it. Well, that's the simplified version anyway.