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Toshiba Recalls Notebook RAM
TheSync writes "The Register is reporting that Toshiba is recalling notebook RAM blaiming third-party DIMMs. This follows on HP's bad notebook RAM in June. Which raises the question, is there a vast sea of bad DIMMs out there?"
is there a vast sea of bad DIMMs out there?
Maybe so, the HP Compaq laptop I'm typing on had 1G of RAM replaced several months back.
As for slashdot editting, though, the memory isn't the only thing DIMM.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Link about Dell goes to a story about HP...
Yes, and it's found using Pricewatch, Google, and other product search engines. Not all cheap RAM is bad, but you're a lot more likely to get something crappy if you go with the lowest bidder. Those prices are low for a lot of reasons, including support, warranty, and quality. I've bought my share of low-priced memory through Pricewatch, and I've also had to return several of them. Never buy memory that doesn't have a lifetime warranty.
I'm sure Toshiba and Dell didn't buy their memory through Pricewatch (that'd be a hell of an order) but they probably sacrifice in the same way to get their internal costs down. Note that you'll pay a nice premium for ordering memory upgrades through the notebook manufacturer.
Apparently there is if you have a Toshiba or Dell notebook, and are particularily unlucky. On a side note, 2 (notable)recalls since June isn't bad. I'm not saying it's great, or even good. But it's not bad.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
It's the distant, and not-so-shiny cousin of 'bling.' Blaim was discovered by a scientist that accidentally blew up his lab by mixing certain combustible chemicals. As the smoke cleared, the lab supervisor came running to find out what happened. Luckily, nobody was hurt. When he asked the scientist how the explosion happened, he was told that one of the janitors must have knocked over a beaker...or something...
And blaim, or 'blame' as we call it in English, was born.
Been seeing a lot of this recently. Why not just have a redirect to The Reg.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've gone through 8-10 sticks for all my own computers and only until the most recent one do I have bad memory. Luckily I have so much that it's never an issue until I have lots of programs open, and even then, only WinAmp skips. I'm too lazy to fix it right now.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I think that's the kind of laptop I've got but I can't seem to remember.
like a lot of slashdot readers I build my own computers.
my #1 problem has always been RAM.
I remember an interview with Larry Augustin of VALinux (remember them ?) when they were still building Linux PC's.
And he said the number one thing they had problems with was RAM.
I've had RAM which could pass all day long on a so-called memory tester, put it into a PC and the thing couldn't even finish POST.
Absolute statements are never true
I'm clueless on DIMM, so here's the definition, it's good to know: "Short for dual in-line memory module, a small circuit board that holds memory chips. A single in-line memory module (SIMM) has a 32-bit path to the memory chips whereas a DIMM has 64-bit path. Because the Pentium processor requires a 64-bit path to memory, you need to install SIMMs two at a time. With DIMMs, you can install memory one DIMM at a time." -- GamerCentric.com
Except for a bad 32mb SIMM I had in 1997, I've never ever had ram go bad on me, but then again I always use Crucial - I've seen some of the prices for ram you can find on Pricewatch and all, but remember 'if it sounds to good to be a deal, it probably isnt'.
Besides, with everything else then can go wrong with PCs these days, I like to be reasonably assured my ram is fine.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
"...on Dell's bad notebook RAM..."
i've had problems with it too. It dumps all over the carpet, scratches up my costly italian-made OS, it bitches at users it doesn't know, it whines when it needs to be flushed, etc.
*rolls up newspaper* bad memory indeed.
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
Well I will be for my Powerbook...
(ducks)
Take off every sig. For great justice.
HP, which discovered the defect during routine notebook testing, said the flaw could result in blue screens, which indicate a computer crash; intermittent lock-ups or memory corruption.
Gosh, I've seen a lot of that out there. They won't give you your money back, but free replacements which are easy to install have been getting rave reviews. After hundreds of similar replacements, I can say for sure that the RAM was not the problem. Every now and then there really is a hardware problem, like a dead back up battery ($3.00 at Walmart), but mostly it's bad software. So spin a CD before you pop the cover.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have stuck with Kingston and Viking over the years and have not had a bad module yet. I have heard that PNY is pretty good but when I worked for resellers we generally had a fair amount of bad PNY memory modules. Kingston can be found on sale and then you can apply coupons and rebates to get their memory down to a pretty good price.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Toshiba recalls RAM.
Sources say the reason behind this move is that the faulty memory can accessed randomly.
Toshiba unavailable for comment.
My number one problem has been motherboards DOA. At least one from each vendor; Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.. I've never had a problem with bad RAM. I have hundreds of sticks of all types of RAM sitting in a shoe box, and whenever I need one for whatever old system or whatever else needs them (like my MPC-2000), they always work like a charm.
I've had crappy RAM, that you have to run at terrible timings, but they work allright.
I have no doubt that RAM is a commonly bad part though. There's so much potential for something to go terribly wrong, and there's a lot of manufacturers. It's not like AMD or Intel with their super-duper billion dollar lab factories for their CPU's - when putting out a line of bad chips could be very, very bad (specifically for AMD.)
As most people around here probably do, buying your RAM from a 3rd party can save you a lot of money. But getting some quality RAM these days won't cost you all that much more and it's worth it for the performance factor alone.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I've never had my RAM go bad.
I've had three hard drives die (two IBM, one Seagate). I've had two NICs fail, and another onboard ethernet port. I've fried a CPU. I've had one SCSI card stop POSTing, and one sound card stop being recognized. I've lost two CD-R drives, had to replace my computer case once, and had two power supplies die on me. I've given away a pair of semi-functional monitors. I've had two motherboards die on me too - the last one with some very impressive blackening of the power connectors.
But I've never once had RAM fail.
Maybe I'm just lucky.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I have built a number of desktops in the past few years for myself and others, and have returned a lot of RAM. Premium RAM seems to have lower failure rates, but I have returned some damn expensive RAM too. I never had problems with older RAM. Are the quality control issues different now?
Whenever anyone 'recalls' something, I always take it in the "I recall the good ol days" context.
I envision people at Toshiba sitting at a boardroom table saying "Yup. I recall Bad RAM. Those sure were the days, what a hoot"
no comment
DDR is a very high speed multipoint parallel interface with very little tolerance in the drivers and recievers. Designing DDR motherboards and DIMM modules is difficult. The capacitive load of the DDR bus varies depending on how many DIMMs are loaded and the DIMM architeture (#chips on DIMM). DDR drivers dont vary the buffer strength based on loading so you will have too much overshoot with one DIMM with 5 chips (x16) and too overdamped with 4 DIMMS with 36 chips (stacked x4) on each DIMM. This is why most motherboards are more relable when all DDR slots are full.
Motherboard manufactures must qualify each DIMM combination separately. You should always use the DIMM modules recommended by the motherboard manufacturer. This is a problem that will only get worse.
...is reporting that Toshiba is recalling notebook RAM blaiming third-party DIMMs... Don't blame it on the editors, it was a bit error in memory.
I've been having to RMA more and more "value" RAM lately. Some is bad...but some is just incompatible, whether its with the chipset on the motherboard or what I don't know. If a person sticks with trusted brands with good chips they seem to have better luck
Bad ram has crossed the ocean,
They now begin to pour,
Out from the boat and up the shore,
Two by two they enter computers,
And soon they number more,
Three by three as well as four by four,
Soon the stream of RAM gets wider
Then it becomes a river,
River becomes an ocean,
Carrying ships that bear,
Bad RAM!
Where did this come from?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Excellent. One day, when I'm good and drunk, I'll tell that story and it will be hilarious. At least, to me..because I'll be drunk...
Rambus used a high speed serialized type bus architecture. Low-pin count and very high performance.
I've built lots of machines based on Rambus memory and never once had a bad stick of memory or a compatiblity issue. I can't say the same for SDRAM based machines: "OK, this stick won't boot in this board or with those other sticks, so let's try this one..."
Why didn't Rambus designs have quality control issues like SDRAM had in the past few years? I don't know, but it could be that Rambus had very strict standards regarding the memory interfaces and the modules themselves. Does the JEDEC have similar QA standards in SDRAM designs or are memory manufacturers allowed to take "liberties" with the designs?
-ted
the company i work for has purchased two large loads of dimms recently for laptops and about 60-70% of the ram starting giving our laptops fits.
we'd pull out the new one and put the old back in and the problems would go away.
we have been lucky and able to return most of it but i think there still might be a few bad sticks circulating amongst our many locations.
unfortunately, we've purchased the ram from multiple vendors and the ram is different brands so i can't add much more than this to the thread.
one tale-tell way that i've found is to load a heavily java encoded page and look for errors coming from the jvm.
Is it 5:30 yet?
I bought a batch of corsair to upgrade a couple of machines, as they're supposed to be a 'quality' brand.
Every single one of them failed memtest86 (8 sticks in total).
I sent them back, went out and got some cheap unbranded (what I normally used) which worked perfectly.
So branded memory isn't always better.
Well, my experiance with Crucial RAM has been very good, however I haven't bought other ram brands in a very long time ~ 6 years. Their prices aren't too much higher for me, and I have no problems, so I see no reason to switch.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
I learned something interesting just yesterday about making DIMMs. There are companies out there that specialize in recovering failed DRAM chips. They buy them as factory rejects for pennies, and use some trickery to mask off the bad bits and re-use the recovered DRAM as a smaller density. I know Micron buys lots of this stuff for their value line. Maybe the patching isn't as good as we'd hope?
Eh, blame it on alpha particles. Those buggers are causing all sorts of problems with bit-flips in memory cells. Buy ECC!
IIRC, Crucial is just Micron under a "better" brand name. Most of what I've got in the parts box have Micron chips on no-name sticks, but didn't cost anywhere near as much. (Also have lots of Hitachi, Panasonic, and other brands of chips, but Micron seem to be the most common, especially in salvaged sticks.)
For all the griping I've heard about bad RAM over the years, only once have I ever encountered any, and that was over 10 years ago -- and I've got mostly no-name RAM here. I do wonder to what degree the problem is cheap motherboards with timing issues.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I did whois on this toshsvcs.com domain and it just points to some dude in Arizona. So I'm thinking, wow, this is one of the best phishing scams I've seen... or is it?
Well apparently it's not, but it sure could have been. It kind of ticks me off that they're doing it this way. How am I supposed to explain to my grandma how to recognize a phishing scam when companies like Toshiba are hiring people to send out legitimate emails that are virtually indistinguishable from scams? In fact, this would still be a great one for the phishers to jump on. Just copy that toshiba recall email, and replace the already suspicious links with new ones that don't redirect to toshiba's website, or which do after asking you to enter your computer's password.
What's the world coming to? Oh, well at least we're getting rid of that oaf in the White House. Oh crap, you mean we're not???
Just in case anyone takes a single guy's testimony as the last word... here's my story.
On my first time buying Crucial ram, I got bad sticks.
They were 2 sticks of 512MB PC3200 "8T" ram. Used on a new Albatron KX18D mobo. (everything was bought from newegg)
The system failed prime95 and memtest86+ whenever it was running in dual channel mode. (even at under stock speeds)! (it was fine in single channel mode)
At that point, I wasnt sure whether to RMA the mobo or the ram or both or whatever... After lots of slot swapping and reseating... in the end I RMAed just the 2 sticks of crucial ram. The RMA was processed quite fast and I received the replacement sticks same model numbers, different batch codes). I plug them in and the system now works well in dual channel. even mildly OCed. What did I lose? many hours and RMA postage.
Bad ram like that is used in things non-crucial applications like digital answering machines, where the memory error will just cause a harmless blip during playback. But who knows what "big brand name memory company" had in mind.
I purchased a HP notebook last spring with a single Infineon PC2700 256MB SODIMM. I replaced it with a pair of Corsair PC2700 512MB SODIMMs... and got BSODs. Switching to the original SODIMM and an Infineon 512MB stick also caused BSODs. Two 256MB sticks worked. Any single stick by itself worked. Finally, I tracked down a pair of Crucial/Micron PC2700 512MB sticks and those worked perfectly.
I'm told that subsequent BIOS updates have fixed many of the compatibility problems, but several hours on the phone with an American HP tech failed to convince HP that an updated BIOS was needed ('twas my first guess). Near as I can tell their American techs aren't a whole lot better than their Indian ones, you just get their useless answers more efficiently since you'll understand their words the first time around. Very nice people, they genuinely want to help, but HP's training program must be a fscking joke.
How much you wanna bet they only tested with Micron memory and just assumed that everything else would work?
Stick with Crucial/Micron and (maybe) Kingston for notebook memory if you value your sanity.
Toshiba claimed that my old Satellite 2540CDS RAM could be upped to 160MB.
In fact, the required 128MB add-in modules were hardly ever delivered - and certainly not to me. Not that they didn't try... they got me a couple, but the machine would not boot.
Apparently they did exist, but the few floating around are preowned and priced $750 (seven-five-zero).
A collector's item!
memtest86 is free and in beer and speech, and is operating system independent. You just write the binary on to a floppy disk and boot the machine off of it.
I've cured several machines of mysterious problems by identifying bad RAM with memtest86. It was always cheap, unbranded RAM that was the problem. I get all my RAM from Crucial nowadays and I never have a problem with it. (I am not affiliated with Crucial or memtest86).
Stick Men
The problem is when the costs of a failure are primarily born by a third-party. It may cost $100 to the manufacturer to replace a widget, but the end-user may suffer substantially higher costs in lost time, lost business, disruption to business. etc.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Crucial = Micron. It's their retail arm. It's the *best* by far: I've built scores of systems, and Crucial *always* works. RAM isn't binary failure these days: use an nforce2 or 3 board (and you'd be daft not to) and you'll find a lot of super duper DDR450! turbo ultra extreme" riced up brands just don't work.
Crucial also ship it to you in an eyeblink, and give unconditional refunds: try going into a normal supplier and saying "this RAM I bought doesn't work in this particular motherboard. It's fine in some and obviously is going to work fine in your test rig, but honest, it's faulty".
If you work with modern boards then you'll find around 90% of problems are down to cheap RAM because tolerances are now "so tight.
Maybe two years ago, the german C't computer magazine did a major test to determine the quality of RAM available in the end-user market.
They bought lots of different RAM, ranging from no-name discount RAM sticks to "premium brands", then tested them in a number of boards. Further tests were done in cooperation with a company that specializes in testing of semiconductors. Here a special analyzer was used that could test the RAM under well-defined electrical conditions.
The results were disillusioning:
While most of the "premium brand" modules were of reasonable quality (but not perfect), many of the cheap parts were definitely sub-standard.
Sometimes they did simply not meet their specifications, running reliably only at lower clock speeds and higher latencies.
But more frequently, the information in the on-module ROM was wrong and misleading those mainboards that relied on it for setting the timing parameters of the RAM. In these cases, the RAM timings had to be set manually to ensure reliable operation.
C - the footgun of programming languages
they *manufacture* RAM, they don't rebadge it.
To be fair, those Crucial sticks I bought were really cheap PC3200. Actually, among the cheapest newegg had at that time. think it was $78 per 512MB. Especially when people are paying 30% and up premiums for getting twin-packs of ram for running dual channel. (even more if u want twin-pack AND low latency stuff) I'm a cheap bastard so I refused to go with the twin packs.