half the RAM showing up in a mini-ITX box

[acheron]

First, I will say that this problem is actually about 6 months old, but I have been lazy and haven't really worked at it.

I have a Jetway Mini-ITX board, model J7F2WE1G2E, based on Via CN700 chipset. (This one) There's a 1GB stick of DDR2 533 RAM in there (This one).

When booting up though, the BIOS only shows 512 MB of RAM, rather than the full 1GB.

Am I an idiot and bought partly-incompatible RAM for the MB? It was 6 months ago, like I said, so I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure I researched fairly thoroughly and had some sort of idea that the RAM would work fine with that model of MB. I could easily have screwed it up though, so if that's the case then ok... if I really need the 1GB I can buy some more, RAM is cheap. 🙂 (Though I remember being amazed at the 4MB of RAM in my 386-25... it seemed like an infinite amount compared to the, what, 256kB in my XT... now get off my lawn. Anyway.)

If I didn't screw that part up, what should I check for to fix it? I googled around a bit but didn't come up with anything. Any ideas?

 

[TheKub]

On first look it appears that the memory should work. Is there by chance a bios update for the motherboard?

 

[dbailey]

do you have onboard video?.... if so maybe it is taking the rest of the ram.. you should be able to lower the amount in the bios.. make it 128 or so.

 

[acheron]

The POST screen reports "524288K with 64M shared memory" -- and the OS (Debian if it matters) reports around 448 MB, i.e. 512-64. (I did find the setting for the video RAM in CMOS setup, though.)

There have been a couple BIOS updates, maybe I will try the latest one and see if that helps.

 

[robisbell]

I'd test the ram in a system that will support it.

 

[jaythespacehound]

I'm sure this sounds like a silly question but check the ram stick to make sure it really is 1 gb....

 

[montag451]

Originally posted by: jaythespacehound
I'm sure this sounds like a silly question but check the ram stick to make sure it really is 1 gb....

:thumbsup:

 

[acheron]

Originally posted by: jaythespacehound
I'm sure this sounds like a silly question but check the ram stick to make sure it really is 1 gb....

Heh, I did that yesterday. It is. 🙂

I've found some references online to the effect that at least some of the Via C7 boards don't support high density RAM, which would explain it. Of course there's nothing specifying that on Jetway's site or in the motherboard manual or anything like that, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to know that. Here's one reference in the reviews of a different Jetway board describing the same problem: "Beware of the memory requirements! The board does take DDR2 533/PC4200 memory, but NOWHERE on either Newegg nor Jetway's site does it say that it requires low-density (64M) DIMMs. I tried to use a 128Mx64 1GB DIMM that Crucial's online memory selector recommended, and the system only recognizes half of it (512MB). I tried a 64M stick instead, and I get the full 1GB capacity."

So kind of annoying, but I'm thinking that is the problem.


Edit: The reviews of this one specifically mention it working with Jetway/C7 boards, so I think unless I find any other information I will order a stick of that and give it a try. Unfortunately I don't have another system that can take DDR2 (my main desktop is a bit old) so I can't test out the RAM I have now in something else.

 

[acheron]

Update: the low-density RAM worked, and I can see the full gigabyte (minus the shared video RAM).

so.. anyone want a 1GB stick of high-density DDR2 533? 🙂 I'll ask a couple friends to see if they need it, otherwise I'll put it on the sale board here... if no one here wants it either, well, into the box of old RAM with the SIMMs and the PC100 DIMMs I guess... (I use SIMMs as keychains; not sure what I'm going to do with old DIMMs.) When I build a new desktop maybe I can use it, but I'd probably go for faster RAM at that point, so probably not.