Had a fun, profitable and knowledge increasing day.

I have been getting ready to send off my RAM and will probably do so in the next day or so. After reading a discussion on here this morning, I decided to look through it and sort out everything 512 or larger. I had a small handfull. I got ahold of a kid that does repairs and sells refurbs and went and met with him. He actually told me anything 128 or higher he wanted so I grabbed my 6 1/2 pounds and went to see him.

I was not looking to make a killing as I was going to get schooled a little bit on RAM. I told him I wanted a buck a stick or trade an older or burned up model and I would be happy. We ended up with $1 regular stick, 50 cents for laptop sized and $2 for server memory.

We spent almost 2 hours testing RAM and in the process used 5 different machines to test the various types. We needed a 6th type, but he could not find it.

We swapped a good bit of RAM and I ended up letting him have about a pound and a quarter for what ended up being $40 and a couple motherboards.

We were both very happy with the deal. I had a little extra cash in my pocket and he upgraded his entire supply of RAM and doubled it for a great price.

I get home and wifey needs to go somewhere. I asked her to let me check e-mails and such real quick. Sure glad I did. 10 minutes sooner a lady had posted on Craig's list wanting to get rid of 3 computers for free. I called her and they were mine. We went and grabbed them along with a few other items she had all for free and we were off again.

Wifey had to stop at work to sign something and while she was in there I jumped out and tore into all of the computers just to get a glimsp.

I found these bad boys. Gskill 1 gig DDR Looks like a 40 dollar bill on E-bay maybe.
http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/...d34984/007.jpg

The system fired up fine when I got home, but the darned thing has UBUNTU running on it.

Now I need to school myself more on the RAM types and be able to test them all. Gained a little knowledge on it here today and it will be my little project for the time being. I will share all that I learn.

Thanks for reading.

Do I seriously need one of these things? seemed a TAD bit over priced for testing RAM.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Triad-TurboC...item5d31f6760c

How about this software disk? Looks like it might be the key, but still need a bunch of different machines to test all of the types.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MEMTEST86-AL...item27b57bfde7

You can buy one of these for about $5000
http://www.innoventions.com/ramcheck...dr2_tester.htm
Personaly all you really need for testing ram is 3 scrap computers. One for ddr one for ddr2. And one for ddr3 ram chips. Unless you want to test server ram then you need 3 more. Then there is laptop ram then you need 3 more. Im in the process of building a testbench myself from scrap parts.

Anyone know why the DDR sells for more than the DDR2?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by parrothead

How about this software disk? Looks like it might be the key, but still need a bunch of different machines to test all of the types.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MEMTEST86-AL...item27b57bfde7

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Ummm this software is free to download. Even comes as an .iso. Just download, burn to blank disk, begin testing with a machine. No OS needed.

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html#R40a

Why thank you very much! I will end up doing just that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by parrothead

Anyone know why the DDR sells for more than the DDR2?

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Hi Parrothead,
I have not seen the memory prices vary too much between DDR and DDR2 on ebay. Maybe the brand and speed are playing a factor.

Thanks for sharing the story. I really enjoy hearing about how folks discover new goldmines through Craigslist, advertising, other internet forums etc. Tracking down a new lead and the discovery really gives quite an adrenaline rush -- the journey is the reward kind of thing. I learned a great deal about RAM and RAM testing from this post as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by parrothead

Anyone know why the DDR sells for more than the DDR2?

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Reason why they sell for more is because they are not making new ones and you now have alot of people who are upgrading there ddr systems and do not want to change out the cpu/motherboard and so they need better memory. You also have alot of stores who will use the older ddr systems and they have been upgrading there systems so they will work faster but they do not want to replace all the computers (being cheap)

Now to test memory...

Do the same thing that the guy was doing...place them into a computer plug them in and see if it will turn on. If you go into BIOS screen and look at the memory to make sure its running that the right speed...but if it boots up...the ram should be fully working...very rarely will they "half" work.

thanks for the info. Makes sense.

Anytime....there are testing systems out there that you can buy to test memory, cpus or cd drives....you don't need it...just have a few test systems that have labels on them so you know what one is what.

This way you can test hard drives and cd drives all with one system that has a OS on it (windows) but you can unplug the windows hard drive any time to test other drives if you need to.

to test memory..I all ready brushed that subject.

to test the CPU, place them into the computer place the heat sink on them and see if the computer will boot...if so go into BIOS screen and check the heath of cpu...you can find all the readings on the BIOS cpu setting page.

You only really need to test 775sockets as 478 sockets are not used anymore.

Issue with the 478 sockets are the pins....they bend VERY easy....775 socket..no pins..nothing to bend...for the most part you can clean them up real nice and plug them in and they will work JUST fine....but you should still check them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by drozenski

Ummm this software is free to download. Even comes as an .iso. Just download, burn to blank disk, begin testing with a machine. No OS needed.

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html#R40a

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Another note on this software. It is recommended that you let the test run at least a few times per stick also only do 1 stick at a time because if you get an error it wont tell you what stick is bad.