Help With Old Computer

M

m0nk3ys1ms

Active Member
I have a Packard Bell M415, with 24MB of RAM which I am trying to upgrade. I have a Double-Sided 128MB PC66 piece I got out of an NEC which put in. After installing it, the system boots, but in system properties, it only shows 32MB RAM. If there is anyone of you out there that know alot about older computers that can help me. I also updated the BIOS recently. Its my first rebuild ive done on my own, and i just need some good advice.

System Specs:
PB M415
PB-810 Mobo
Pentuim I MMX 166mHz
Windows 98 SE (upgraded from 95)
v1.25 BIOS
2 DIMM MEMORY SLOTS (one of them is quite tempermental, some times it works sometimes it doesnt)
 
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it is likely that the motherboard has a limit to the maount of ram that can be installed, therefore is recognising the 128mb stick as something far smaller, if this is the problem then it is unlikely that you can fix it

Lee :)
 
the mobo is supposted to work with up to 128mb says the sticker on the front of the machine.
 
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ive tried alot of things. my uncle told me if i update the bios, that is should work, but it didnt. i tried doing a selective startup, and it didnt work. and i cant thing of anything else to try
 
i got it from a family friend who got a new dell, and they gave it to me. ive had it about 3 weeks. after getting it, i installed windows 98. the next week i bought a Wireless card for it, and i got more memory last night out of the NEC Computer (which i had heard was Packard Bell). I cant think of any reason why it wont work.
 
Packard Bell Memory

Well you may not even be a reading member by now, but I will inform whoever reads this.

I have a Packard Bell M415 Model A940-TWR
The computer will only support 128MB of RAM.

The problem I found is it would only read 1/4 of the memory!
I called Packard Bell and they wanted an arm & a leg for 128MB RAM

Well for 1/3 the price I bought two memory chips from Circuit City or Best Buy. Two 256MB RAM = 512MB RAM.

Well the computer only read 1/4 of the memory so it was maxed at 128MB.
512/4 = 128

I used this configuration for at least 4 years!

1/3 the price!!!!

Now the best news!
Those Two PC133 256MB RAM were finally pulled and put into a
Gateway G6-350 and the gateway used the entire 512MB of RAM

If I had went with Packard Bell Memory, it would have cost 3 times as much and became worthless later!

I now have some old memory chips that came with other motherboards that I put in the old Packard Bell. It is very little memory, but I only use it for WIN 95 & DOS now! Switch Boxes are great!!!!!!!

Mike
 
If it reads 128 max, then alot of older boards had to be set up different. If you have 2 slots sometimes each slot will only read 64mb for a total of 128 max, if it has 4 slots each slot still could only read 64mb each. If you want to fill all 4 slot you had to run 4 32mb sticks!
 
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