Upgrading
and configuring memory is a perennial problem no matter how new a
machine is. This chapter
describes the theory and practice to memory upgrade.
After
speed the next most important aspect of a memory system is how easy and
economical it is to increase its capacity. Adding memory can actually make a
machine run faster by reducing the need
to make use of slow disk storage for
data and programs that otherwise wouldn’t fit into memory!
Many
users initially buy machines with 1 to 4
M bytes of RAM only to discover that falling RAM prices and the
increasing demand of software for memory space
force them to consider adding
more memory. It is difficult to believe that only a short time ago we ware working with 64 Kbytes of memory and now 64 Mbytes doesn’t sound unreasonable
or astronomically expensive. MS-DOS 386/486 based systems typically need a
minimum of 1 to 2 Mbytes, Windows 3 needs to 2 to 8 M bytes and OS/2 8 to 12 Mbytes but it is rare
to find any system that cannot make us of extra memory.
Adding
extra RAM is in most cases easy, just a matter of opening the case and plugging in some chips. The only complication is
deciding what type of chips to bye
and exactly where to plug them in.
However some users encounter a slightly
different and almost shocking problem –
to increase the total; amount of memory
fitted to their machine they have
to remove some, if not all, of the existing memory!
At first this seems to be a paradoxical
situation but, as will be explained it
is a perfectly reasonable and sensible
consequence of the 386SX using a 16-bit external bus and the rest of the family
using a 32-bit external bus. An understanding of how this affects the
additional of memory can save
you from starting with a memory size that forces the original
chips to be removed as part of an
upgrade.
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