Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Uncle Skeleton · May 17, 2008, 05:17 PM

I have a core duo 1.66 mini, with 2x256 MB ram (refurb). I bought 2x1 GB PC2-5300 667 mhz so-dimm from Omni, they arrive promptly and I installed them. The mac no longer booted. It didn't even drive the monitor, it just spun up the fans, the status light, and the optical drive (I had left a DVD in there) and sat there. I reinstalled the Apple ram, and the mac boots just fine. Then I got that DVD out of there (you never know), tried each Omni stick individually (same nothing both times), then put the Apple ram back in (still works).

So questions:
1. Any bad experiences with Omni?
2. Is there anything special I need to do when installing new ram chips so that it will recognize them? Does top/bottom slot matter, when there's only 1 stick (I used the bottom-only to test)?
3. Is the mini finicky with ram, or is there some special spec I failed to meet? I'm not that surprised to get a bad stick from the cheapest ram supplier I could find, but 2 bad out of 2? They have a lifetime warranty, so it's hard to believe they'd be that careless about quality.
4. Anything else I should try before returning these? I don't want to waste time with shipping if there's something else that might work, seeing how hard it is to get the mini's casing off.

Thanks in advance.

mduell · May 17, 2008, 06:19 PM

1. Never heard of them.
2. No.
3. No. Lifetime warranty doesn't mean much if the company is gone in a month.
4. Do you have any other machines that take DDR2 SO-DIMMs?

Uncle Skeleton · May 17, 2008, 08:34 PM

3. I've seen them for many years while shopping, but I don't recall if I've ever actually bought anything from them before.
4. OMG, I have an iMac at work! I didn't think of it because it's not a portable, but I think it takes the same ram (Does it? It's the racoon edition, 2 GB Core 2 Duo).

ghporter · May 17, 2008, 10:14 PM

I would say that maybe the RAM from Omni is just a tad thicker at the connector end, so it's not going in all the way and thus not really working. Can you install it again and see if the pins go into the connector as deeply as the original RAM's pins? Sometimes RAM sockets are stupidly tight, and that can cause you to think you have the DIMM in all the way when you really don't.

And the iMac takes the same RAM. I found my own aluminum iMac's RAM sockets to be incredibly easy to install DIMMs in. You might have better luck getting the Omni parts in the iMac and then be able to test them.

Uncle Skeleton · May 20, 2008, 02:07 PM

I tried one of the two sticks on the iMac just now. It definitely feels thicker than the 1GB apple stick that was already in it, but I got it in all the way with no trouble. When I boot the iMac, it gives three alarm-sounding beeps and doesn't boot. Taking out the Omni ram remedies this. I guess that's a pretty clear indictment.

MichiganRich · May 20, 2008, 02:22 PM

I see you don't need any help in the diagnosis area but I wanted to put my 2 cents in for cheap RAM. I have used Transcend RAM from newegg in both a 1.66 mini (mom's) and a 24" aluminum iMac (mine) and have had no troubles at all. They are about the cheapest I could find and are also lifetime warranted.

ghporter · May 20, 2008, 04:01 PM

I agree you have a pretty open and shut case against your third-party RAM.

FWIW, I have gone as low as Corsair RAM, but generally I go with Kingston or Crucial. Having never heard of "Omni" memory products tells me that they are not "big players" in the RAM market, and maybe their standards ain't exactly on the level that Apple requires. Macs tend to be pretty picky about RAM timing, among other things, so that could be the issue right there.

Uncle Skeleton · May 20, 2008, 06:38 PM

Here's the module I bought:
Omni Technologies Premier Manufacturer
Maybe someone can see any red flags (besides the low price), but it seemed to emphasize the manufacturer specs as much as anyone does.

mduell · May 20, 2008, 06:56 PM

Uncle Skeleton · May 21, 2008, 12:27 PM

You gotta give Omni credit for having more specifics about the product, and an actual picture of it. I hate online vendors that don't have a picture of what you're about to buy. But Omni's words are mostly images of words, that's a little strange.

seanc · May 21, 2008, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton

You gotta give Omni credit for having more specifics about the product, and an actual picture of it. I hate online vendors that don't have a picture of what you're about to buy. But Omni's words are mostly images of words, that's a little strange.

Ugh, makes it so slow to load. Who on earth came up with that?

Anyway, does sound like the memory is somehow incompatible with Macs because the iMac refusing the RAM rules out the issue of something being wrong with the Mini.

ghporter · May 21, 2008, 04:40 PM

"Images of words" rather than text is a big red flag for me. And particularly note their none-too-subtle watermarking of their images... Almost all the text on their page is actually image-based. That sounds VERY dodgy to me. I've run into other online sales sites that handle their content that way and it was NEVER a good thing.

Uncle Skeleton · May 30, 2008, 10:45 PM

Just a follow-up, the replacements arrived today and they both appear to work just fine. From memory, the non-working ones were much harder to stick into the slots; these ones go in just as easily as the stock ram does... don't know if that's significant.