Infineon PC133 64RAM won't work in a Gateway Pentium II 266 system

vtrac

Member
Apr 8, 2000
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I want to install a new Infineon PC133 64meg SDRAM stick into an old Gateway system. The system already has a 64Meg DIMM stick. When I install the RAM, it POSTs fine, but does not recognize the new stick. When windows tries to load, it reboots right before it gets to the GUI. When I take out the old DIMM, it doesn't boot at all. When I take the old DIMM and put it back and take out the Infineon stick, it POSTs but says that the system has decreased in memory, even though the bios didn't recognize it in the first place.

Whats wrong? Is it because the motherboard has a 66mhz memory bus and can't use the Infineon stick? I didn't think that that matters. Any help would greatly be appreciated. I don't want to have to buy PC66 RAM (its also a lot more expensive than PC133).
 

Techwhore

Golden Member
Aug 2, 2000
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try taking your old ram out, and putting the new ram into the same DIMM slot. If that posts and works while in windows at least you know the stick is good and works. If the new stick works by itself, then just put the old stick in and keep moving it around to different DIMM slots until it posts correctly. There is an order of DIMM slots and some boards don't use consequetive slots. The new pc133 stick should work regardless of your 66 mhz bus speed, just try it by itself to insure that it's not defective.
 

vtrac

Member
Apr 8, 2000
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"When I take out the old DIMM, it doesn't boot at all."

I've tried that. However, I'm going to try the Infineon stick in another system and see if it works there. I highly doubt its defective, but we'll see...
 

RickH

Senior member
Aug 5, 2000
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The new SDRAM is different than the origional DIMM in the machine. I had an old socket 7 MB that did the same thing. Something about the number of chips on the DIMM or chips on both sides of the printed circut board, I don't recall. Some one must know. R.
 

BigDog2k

Member
Jun 7, 2000
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I had a couple of old socket 7 boards that i ran into a similar problem with. I couldn't get them to see anything above 16meg of the newer ram, although you could put in 128mb. it ended up being that you need 2 clock ram, which was the older stuff, rather than the 4 clock ram which is used now. You might have to call around to see if anyone has that and if that will work