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From: rogerhef@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Roger Heflin)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Can Windows damage hardware (RAM)?
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.195757.6133@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Date: 15 Feb 91 19:57:57 GMT
References: <1991Feb12.220834.1991@syssoft.com> <13920@as0c.sei.cmu.edu>
Sender: news@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (The News Guru)
Organization: Kansas State University
Lines: 32

In <13920@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson) writes:

>In article <1991Feb12.220834.1991@syssoft.com> tom@syssoft.com (Rodentia) writes:
>>Ever since I was a little hacklet, I had been told software
>>cannot damage hardware (walking disk drives excluded).  Imagine
>>my surprise when my next door neighbor installed windows on his
>>2.5Mbyte 16MHz 386, ran notepad, and POOF!  He got a crash, and
>>whenever he boots, the RAM test fails after 512K (the point 
>>where it starts accessing the 2Mbyte expansion slot RAM).

>I installed Windows on a no-name 286/12 that had 150ms ram.  Windows would
>cause a parity error, but no other DOS program I ran would - and the
>boot-up test always passed it.  When I de-turboed down to 8mhz I had no
>problem with windows.

>I suspect windows gave my memory a better workout then the built-in ram
>diagnostics.  

The memory that you are getting the parity error on is probably above
the 1M mark.  If you where not using extended and/or expanded memory for
anything the memory was unused, and since nothing used it there was no   
reason to get a parity error.  Putting the machine down to 8Mhz is very
similar to adding a wait state to the ram, it the fact that it slows down
the ram access.  The boot-up test passes because on most machines I have
seen the boot-up test starts without reading the CMOS setup on the machine,
and so the ramtest test with a certain maximum number of wait states, it 
does not see it the wait states are set properly for the memory, it just 
checks to see it the memory works at the slowest speed allowed by your    
computer.  


rogerhef@matt.ksu.ksu.edu