Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!alberta!dvinci!herald.usask.ca!labach
From: labach@herald.usask.ca (Terry Labach)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Memory chips killed by heat?
Keywords: heat, memory, RAM
Message-ID: <1990Jul9.150016.11293@dvinci.usask.ca>
Date: 9 Jul 90 15:00:16 GMT
References: <46500135@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@dvinci.usask.ca
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Lines: 24

In article <46500135@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> cl34316@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:

>Lately my Packard Bell AT compatible with a Seagate 40MB drive has been
>giving me a "memory parity error" within 1-10 minutes of turning it on.
>I was wondering if this could be caused by heat, as I have no air conditioning
>and it's around 85 degrees in here on a normal day. 

Probably...I once administered a student lab that had been jerry-rigged in
a south facing classroom.  Once summer hit, the temperature got up to
35 C in the room.  Starting at about 29 C, machines would start
failing and _nothing_ would run past 33 C.  Not all the machines would
give parity errors, though.  Many would just lock and would not
respond to anything.  Once I had convinced the administration to put in
air conditioning, the temperature plummeted to a high of 25 and I had
_no_ further problems with the hardware. (the students on the other
hand... :-) )

Don't take my word for it, you should still check out any other
possibilities that could cause this...

"...if you are not able to adapt yourself, if || T. Labach, Computing Services
you are not inclined to crawl in the mud on   || University of Saskatchewan
your belly, you are not a revolutionary but a || BITNET:labach@sask
chatterbox..." - V. I. Lenin (1918)           || Internet:labach@sask.usask.ca