I'v had a system acting up for days. I've zeroed data on the drive, reinstalled the OS (8.5, 8.6, 9.0) several times, extensions on/off, still just crashes after about 5 minutes of work. I've replaced the HD, and now removed suspect RAM. I was just wondering if random crashes were a symptom of dead RAM. Any replies would be great!

[wlonh]

if the RAM was truly dead your Mac would not boot and you'd get the so-called 'chimes o' death' instead of normal chimes

but it could be a defective stick of RAM

random crashes can be the cause of cheap memory, but if your memory is bad it most likely would have been bad from the start.

What model Mac do you have?

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Eliott Wolfe
Winnetka, Calif

[This message has been edited by The Wolfe (edited 10-05-2000).]

Thanks for your replies. I have PM 7600, 144 MB RAM (knocked down to 96 at the moment). I have upgraded the processor by way of a Z-Force Card w/ a 300 mhz IBM ZIF. I just took this out today and replaced it with a stock daughter card @ 120 mhz. For some reason, I'm back on stable ground again.

The odd thing is that I had sleep crash problems relating to a used hard drive I had purchased. After I updated the firmware, It ran fine for about 12 hours, and then the finder started quitting, and just freezing in general. I reformatted, zeroed out, and reinstalled the OS several times. Nothing. Then I started testing RAM, the old HD, PCI Cards, trashing prefs, everything. Nothing.

The only thing that has worked is the new processor. So now my question is what has died, the Z-force card or the ZIF card, or is the software to run the Z-force configured wrong.

I'm at a loss.

Any advice would help.

-Jon