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B. How to use bad memory

Do your programs crash randomly?

Then your RAM-modules may be faulty. Especially PS-2 (SIMM) modules are very vulnerable to "static electricity".
Or you have some unused RAM-modules laying around?

No need to worry, like on a harddisk, you can mark bad memory and exclude it from usage.

But first we have to know where exactly the memory is faulty. For this purpose there is an excellent program called MemTest, which should be started without booting (as much free memory as possible). Beforehand, the "DataCache" of the CPU should be disabled with

CPU NODATACACHE NODATABURST NOEXTERNALCACHE

. Now start the "Rotate 32" test and save the result.

Now get Allocate.

Insert at the beginning of your `S:Startup-Sequence':

resident c:Allocate pure
Allocate <>NIL: 68900000 100000
Allocate <>NIL: 68B00000 100000
resident Allocate remove

The hexadecimal addresses should, of course, contain the bad memory areas. (Be generous, don't be stingy with a few 100KB or MB (depending on the chip).)

This works with LinUX, too:

Create a `file', where you insert all areas which work 100% okay. For example

2097152
0x68000000 9437184
0x68A00000 1048576
0x68C00000 3670016

and start AmiBoot with -m FileName.


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