[DanThe]

Hi, ive searched out max ram specs for my imac G5 1.8 17 inch and it states up to 2GB (2 strips of 1GB)
I bought a pair of Kingston 1GB PC3200 and for some reason when I tried to start the machine with both strips fitted it took me to the open firmware screen.
ATM ive got one of the 1GB strips and another 256 strip fitted

What could the problem be?

[AKcrab]

Could be bad RAM. Put one stick in at a time and see if you can narrow it down.

[P]

What happens if you manually boot from the open firmware screen?

[chipchen]

I would try what P said, manually boot from open firmware. "mac-boot" is what I remember... been a while though.

Or, could be bad RAM of course. Try each stick in each slot... see what happens, if there's a pattern.

Then lastly, could be logic board. That's if no matter what brand of RAM or which sticks, it always has the same problem when 2GB of RAM is installed.

[DanThe]

Well that was strange, I tried the other 1GB stick with the 256 and it started up fine. So I then tried both the 1GB sticks and it also started up fine

Never mind, it works

[P]

That can happen. Might be that you have switched the order of the DIMMs - that can help - or you just reset the OF by pulling the RAM so many times.

Anyway, it works.

[DanThe]

Ok, it doesnt work

First time it started up fine, next time I started it up I just had a black screen and the fan came on high speed, so I turned it off and it then started up fine.
This has started to get worse, taking up to four attempts to start the machine, sometimes shows open firmware screen (wont boot from that either) and sometimes the desktop shows but it asks me to restart.

Ive now taken one of the 1GB sticks out and will try one at a time for a few days just to eliminate the RAM as the problem

[Rumor]

Try putting your old RAM in and see if the problem persist. If it doesn't, send the new RAM back for replacement.

[DanThe]

This is going from bad to worse, I swapped the 1GB stick that was working for the other, it started up fine first try but then started doing the usual blank screen and fan malarky, so obviously a faulty stick.
Swapped them again and sent the one back for replacement last week, came home yesterday and it refused to start up
Its been working fine with that one stick of ram since I first installed it, but only now does the machine decide it doesn't like it???
So I removed it and fitted the old 256 sticks which work fine, strange thing is, the 1GB sticks I bought are Kingston, exactly the same down to the sticker as the original 256 Apple ram that came with the machine

[DanThe]

I just had the ram tested with a PC program, it picked up 43 faults before the program was stopped.
What could be the problem? This is new ram that came in a sealed packet, is it more likely to be the Mac?

[Big Mac]

The RAM is bad, Jim.