[NormPhillips]

Alright...

So I have two 256MB RAM chips in my PowerBook G4 550, both PC133 SO-DIMMs. I replaced one of them because while it seemed to work fine, the hardware test CD reported it was a bad chip. I took it out and replaced it with a new 256 RAM chip and the hardware test CD no longer reports having a bad ram chip. And while there wasn't much an improvement in speed in Mac OS 9, in Mac OS X startup was A LOT faster and most functions were a little faster. My question is this, should I put this RAM chip to use and place it in a friend's 233 iMac (which is running Mac OS 9) or do you think it will cause my friend's computer with problems and I should just trash it?

Thanks in advanced.

[vmarks]

Here's why I would say no, don't use it.

If a memory module is known to be bad, you can expect things that get written to memory to get corrupted. Data written to memory and corrupted then gets written as corrupted to disk.

Congratulations, you now will have corrupted data on your hard drive.

Given that several elements of the OS X system (and OS 9) are read into memory, and get written back out to disk, you'll have a corrupted system in no time.

So, no. I wouldn't use memory known to be faulty.

[Fredo]

Plus, a PowerBook chip won't fit in an iMac.

[SOLIDAge]

Originally posted by Fredo:
Plus, a PowerBook chip won't fit in an iMac.

yes it will under the metal chase thing
as long as the chips PC100, although those 550 Tis use PC133

[NormPhillips]

Originally posted by Fredo:
Plus, a PowerBook chip won't fit in an iMac.

And this is a tray-loading iMac G3, you have to remember. Those used PC66 SO-DIMMs (laptop RAM).

[Fredo]

OK, the 144pin chips found in the PowerBook will fit in the early G3 iMac's, under 350mhz. All other iMac's take 168 pin chips which aren't interchangeable with PowerBook chips.
My mistake.

[D'Espice]

vmarks is totally right, if a RAM stick is known to be bad somehow, don't you never _ever_ use it.
Bad sticks can cause the weirdest errors and misbehaviors of any kind. Data corruption, instability and low performce are just three out of few dozen examples.

[OptG]

The bad memory will also likely cause kernel panics all of the time.

[bradoesch]

I had a bad RAM chip in my iMac DV. It wasn't the RAM that shipped with the computer. When it got too hot it gave errors. Launching programs would give crazy errors (I don't remember anything specific.) Everything worked fine when the computer was cool, but once it had been running for a while things went wrong. It was interesting to diagnose the RAM problem. Running RAM tests in Tech Tool Pro showed everything fine when the RAM was cool, but once it started getting warm it reported errors. I eventually got it replaced and now things are fine.

Brad