pc100 versus pc133

[Teego]

I am not sure which forum was most appropo.....

My brother in law bought an all mighty Emachine with 32meg of SDRAM. The specs on the website do not indicate the motherboard name but it is an i810 chipset. They say that this is upgradable to 256. Other than being 3.3v, I can't tell if it requires pc100 or pc133 or if it can handle either. What info do I need to know which type of RAM to get him??

I don't want to buy that great 256 pc133 ram deal if I have no machine to put it in........

 

[lifeguard1999]

It uses PC100 memory. My parents have a Emachines 600is that I bought for them at Christmas (with their money). At 32MB of SDRAM, the machine crawled. Upgraded to 128MB and it ran fine. Since memory is so cheap, they wanted the memory maxed out. I recently upgraded it again for them to 256MB total. The first stick I bought from Crucial using the 15% webpromo for $65. Then I bought the second stick for $56. Now it is at $50. What a great time to buy SDRAM!

Crucial 15% off

The only problem with the machine is that the CD drive broke. I replaced it with a Creative CD drive and it does not work either. Grrrrr. I am still troubleshooting this problem. The Emachines CD really is broke as it will not work on my machine. I have not tried the Creative one out yet. Emachines said that they would replace the CD drive, but you had to send in the entire machine, pay shipping both ways, and you would not see your machine for 4 weeks. What a ripoff, but I should have expected it for $400.

 

[Teego]

Have you tried the Ide ribbon running to the cd-rom? That pooched out on a machine here, making it appear as though the cd-rom was pooched.......


And thanks for the reply btw.

 

[MGRook]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think that if you bought PC100 and the mobo supported up to PC133 you would'nt have a problem. Coversely, if you bought PC133 and the mobo only supported PC100 the PC133 would run at PC100.

 

[Teego]

Yep, that sounds like sound logic.

So I will get the pc-100 RAM and hopefully be safe.
(If the 256 meg stick doesn't work, I could find a good home for
it in my computer ........)

 

[lifeguard1999]

I went the 2 x 128MB route. I am not sure if a 1 x 256MB stick would work.

On the CD drive - I took the cable off my Iomega CD-RW and put it on the Emachines drive. It failed. I put it back on my Iomega and it still works. The Emachines drive does have power (the drawer opens and closes, but the disk never spins up) and the jumper is set to master (not slave or cable select, though I have tried those for kicks) as it is the only drive on the cable. I have not had time to play with the Creative CD drive yet.