Hardware Old laptop crashing after RAM upgrade – Any ideas?

[KleinesSinchen]

Just for fun I have pulled out a laptop from about 2005. This was already bad at the time:

Acer Aspire 3000 series (model 3003 to be precise).

I wanted at least increase the puny RAM. Laptops from that era have DDR1 and usually reach their maximum with 2*1GB SO-DIMM.
Easy task, huh? That is what I thought. I got further than in this example:
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/437143/aspire-3003lm-ram
since my 2GB are detected normally. It just does not work correctly. When having more than 1GB installed the system (Lubuntu 18.04) randomly crashes after a few minutes with kernel panic and/or lots of segmentation faults in journalctl. Same for attempting to use Clonezilla. No dice unless RAM is 1GB or less.

With 1GB the computer works at full load for hours. Completely stable. Installing more than this → Crashing.

Things I tried:

• Running memtest86+ with 2GB RAM → No errors. No problems in the harsh tests.
• BIOS update (no changelog to be found) → Update went smoothly, but no improvement.

Does anybody have an idea what could cause this? Is this just the bad SiS (Scrap in Silicon) chipset playing mad?

 

[Hayato213]

What is the cpu model?

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Any chance the module is bad?

I ask this only because I had similar strange issues with a bad DDR3 module recently, and it didn't have any obvious faults, just the weird system crashes.

 

[AncientBoi]

He asked about the CPU MODEL, not module. js

 

[AkikoKumagara]

He asked about the CPU MODEL, not module. js

My question is for OP.

 

[CMDreamer]

Depending on the CPU model, it might not accept more than 1 GB of RAM.

 

[subcon959]

It might seem logical that a 32bit CPU should support 2GB RAM, but as stated a lot of these were limited to 1GB.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Any chance the module is bad?

I ask this only because I had similar strange issues with a bad DDR3 module recently, and it didn't have any obvious faults, just the weird system crashes.

Unlikely. Both of them work if using only one. Adding known to work 256MB on top of 1GB leads to crashes as well.

Depending on the CPU model, it might not accept more than 1 GB of RAM.

It might seem logical that a 32bit CPU should support 2GB RAM, but as stated a lot of these were limited to 1GB.

I didn't know that. What an arbitrary sounding limit! Reminds me on those old HDD limits for various reasons in BIOS. 500MB, 8GB, 32GB, 137GB. The latter is probably true for this laptop as well.
Strangely enough the CPU already has PAE, which should allow 32 Bit CPUs to got further than 4GB (IIRC 40 bit or 36 bit adress bus -- not that this was ever used much)


The CPU is Mobile Sempron 3000+. As said above, the laptop was garbage to begin with in 2005.

Full list of shame:

Spoiler: lspci and cpuinfo

root@sinchen-klappi:~# lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 760/M760 Host (rev 03) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge) 00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL Media IO] LPC Controller (rev 25) 00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2/3 SMBus controller 00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 IDE Controller 00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0) 00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7012 AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0) 00:03.0 USB controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f) 00:03.1 USB controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f) 00:03.2 USB controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller 00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 91) 00:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02) 00:0b.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter root@sinchen-klappi:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 28 model name : Mobile AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+ stepping : 0 microcode : 0x41 cpu MHz : 800.000 cache size : 128 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 1 core id : 0 cpu cores : 1 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fdiv_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good cpuid lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch vmmcall bugs : fxsave_leak sysret_ss_attrs swapgs_fence spectre_v1 spectre_v2 bogomips : 3599.91 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 32 bits virtual power management: ts fid vid ttp

Thanks for so many replies!

 

[CMDreamer]

Now that's old!

The Mobile AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+ supports a single bus memory and considering the RAM is DDR1 the max memory supported is 1 GB, so there you have it.

Even if the MoBo has two memory slots, the max it can use is 1 GB (i.e. 500 MB x 2).

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Most likely the laptop simply doesn't support more than 1GB, taking a look at the manual, the max specs it supports officially is 2x 512MB sticks, anything over is considered "unsupported", and while I have seen some older laptops blast past the "max memory limit", something like that Acer with the potato Sempron in it really probably can't push pass the listed limit.

What density is the RAM (ie how many memory chips)? I've got a good dozen or so older laptops from that era I refurbished some few years back, had a sort of similar issue with an old Dell where certain 2x 1GB modules wouldn't work but others would, turned out it was the memory density causing a weird issue. If each stick only has 4 memory chips (4x128M), it's considered "high density" and can cause all sorts of problems on consumer motherboards and that could be the issue. If it's 8x64M chips, then it's more likely the above issue instead and that potato just can't handle that much RAM in stable fashion.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Now that's old!

What do you mean?
It is surely one of the newer devices here.

Spoiler: This is the kind of computers I sometimes play around with

80386 CPU, 4MB of RAM, 220MB of HDD, 512KB graphics memory (or was it 256KB?), 3.5" floppy drive, 640x480 B/W display.
Has a real ISA slot (half length cards only) and I plugged in a Sound Blaster Pro.

taking a look at the manual, the max specs it supports officially is 2x 512MB sticks,

Manual is quite funny in this regard: You are right! 1GB is maximum.


Wait a moment… example configurations: →

Seems Acer doesn't know what they are doing?

What density is the RAM (ie how many memory chips)?

Eight chips on each side

instead and that potato just can't handle that much RAM in stable fashion.

Probably this. Just why?? Not sure what potato means in that context (some kind of taunt? → Well deserved. They ripped off the lady who bought this thing back then!), but it seems despite the good results in memtest86+ it just won't work in a real OS with 1024MB+x
=========

Regarding the CPU I've found this page (German language, but just more or less data table)
http://www.cpu-galerie.de/html/amdk8sempronm754-smn3000bkx2bx.html
where 4GB of addressable RAM are mentioned.
=================================================================
I'll give up at this point. Thank you all for the support!
=================================================================


What is a more than positive surprise here is that there wasn't anything like: "Why do you want to use that old laptop?"
After now inserting an IDE→mSATA converter this thing actually became kind of usable with Lubuntu 18.04 (Pro support until 2028 enabled). LibreOffice is fine. Using one or two tabs in latest Firefox works – sort of. It will play MPEG-2, but not h.264 videos.

The most problematic thing when I set up the OS in 2019 was getting the SiS graphics to work with 1280*800 instead of 640*480. Compiling the driver and switching to an another version of X11.
Even the strange Broadcom WiFi works.

 

[SylverReZ]

Just for fun I have pulled out a laptop from about 2005. This was already bad at the time:

Acer Aspire 3000 series (model 3003 to be precise).

I wanted at least increase the puny RAM. Laptops from that era have DDR1 and usually reach their maximum with 2*1GB SO-DIMM.
Easy task, huh? That is what I thought. I got further than in this example:
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/437143/aspire-3003lm-ram
since my 2GB are detected normally. It just does not work correctly. When having more than 1GB installed the system (Lubuntu 18.04) randomly crashes after a few minutes with kernel panic and/or lots of segmentation faults in journalctl. Same for attempting to use Clonezilla. No dice unless RAM is 1GB or less.

With 1GB the computer works at full load for hours. Completely stable. Installing more than this → Crashing.

Things I tried:

• Running memtest86+ with 2GB RAM → No errors. No problems in the harsh tests.
• BIOS update (no changelog to be found) → Update went smoothly, but no improvement.

Does anybody have an idea what could cause this? Is this just the bad SiS (Scrap in Silicon) chipset playing mad?

Either the modules are fake or damaged through shipping, or that your PC does not support the RAM that you've just installed.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

This became laptop became even more weird now.

I've replaced the 60GB IDE HDD with a super cheap adapter IDE→mSATA containing an equally super cheap mSATA SSD with 128GB. Unsurprisingly this made the machine a lot faster (on low level -- new bottleneck are the CPU and the old chipset).
But for some reason 2GB of RAM work nicely while the SSD is used. An no, the old HDD is not bad. Slow, yes, like you'd expect from a 2005 budget laptop HDD. But not defective. Passed the S.M.A.R.T. self-test, very few hours usage time. Like said above: With 1GB the system works from HDD (slow of course). With 2GB it crashes.
Now with the SSD 2GB seem to be fine.
This text was written on the old laptop!


Guess this solved itself by ???

 

[SylverReZ]

This became laptop became even more weird now.

I've replaced the 60GB IDE HDD with a super cheap adapter IDE→mSATA containing an equally super cheap mSATA SSD with 128GB. Unsurprisingly this made the machine a lot faster (on low level -- new bottleneck are the CPU and the old chipset).
But for some reason 2GB of RAM work nicely while the SSD is used. An no, the old HDD is not bad. Slow, yes, like you'd expect from a 2005 budget laptop HDD. But not defective. Passed the S.M.A.R.T. self-test, very few hours usage time. Like said above: With 1GB the system works from HDD (slow of course). With 2GB it crashes.
Now with the SSD 2GB seem to be fine.
This text was written on the old laptop!
View attachment 408713

Guess this solved itself by ???

What Linux distro are you using?

 

[KleinesSinchen]

What Linux distro are you using?

This is Lubuntu 18.04 LTS – last Ubuntu with 32 bit version. LXDE is probably the best choice for such a weak system.
Pro support is enabled with updates until 2028.
============

A nice experiment with the result that even an entry level laptop from 2005 can be a usable system for some internet usage and office work. No chance newer video formats will play though.
Purpose is/was doing the opposite of the majority. Many people dismiss older devices with arrogance as useless.

Next stuff with old computers will go to the blog.

 

[AncientBoi]

Either the modules are fake or damaged through shipping, or that your PC does not support the RAM that you've just installed.

Yep. Just like I bought 8 more GB [(2) 4GB] ram for the 2 xtra slots my laptop had. It wouldn't even acknowledge it.

Tried for 16 GB

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Yep. Just like I bought 8 more GB [(2) 4GB] ram for the 2 xtra slots my laptop had. It wouldn't even acknowledge it.


Tried for 16 GB

Strange. Never had trouble on such new[sic!] computers with adding RAM.
My main laptop from late 2013 has 2*8GB and is really fast. SSD in mSATA, SSD in 2.5" bay and 2TB HDD in caddy replacing the DVD drive (takes a minute to switch between HDD and DVD).
New laptops often come equipped worse than mine and offer zero upgrade possibilties. And that after 10 years. Try finding a 2003 laptop that partially surpasses a 2013 machine…

This nonsense banner with the percentage of mainstream games a PC can run makes me angry. So many people put that into their signature to brag when they have a powerful computer, which had probably cost as much as a very good used car (and they will replace the system two years later to continue with the "AAA games"). I've blocked the connection to pcgamebenchmark.com because I was sick of adding every single signature with it into the uBlock list. But your embedded picture went through. Nice to see a lower percentage for once instead of just the "latest and greatest".

Even though this game benchmark thing recommended you to upgrade your GPU (good luck on an average laptop), I see no reason why more RAM should not be detected. Not much possibilities than the process of elimination.
Try your SO-DIMMs in another laptop
Try some other SO-DIMMs in your laptop

 

[Joom]

Purpose is/was doing the opposite of the majority. Many people dismiss older devices with arrogance as useless.

I think many retro enthusiasts know how well Linux can revive older tech. That's what I was selling people on 10 years ago. Can't tell you how many Compaqs and Packard Bells I threw Ubuntu on back in the day. Also, if you want something slightly newer, there's LMDE. Mint still maintains a 32bit version of Cinnamon on Debian, but for how long is anybody's guess. Word is that Debian themselves are about to drop i386 support, so that's going to be less options in the near future. I suppose Ubuntu is probably treating you right, though, considering what you use the machine for.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

I think many retro enthusiasts know how well Linux can revive older tech.

Hell, yeah.
Arguably this particular old laptop wasn't worth the hassle. More or less a mental exercise. I remember spending two days in 2019 just for getting the SiS graphics to work correctly with then lastest Lubuntu LTS.
I believe SiS was possible by default with 14.04 versions of Ubuntu but they dropped that garbage at some point.

As for the sunset for 32 bit versions: To be honest this is okay. Not worth supporting that for eternity. Many computers with strictly 32 bit CPU have been scrapped already or are just unused. They aren't able to cope with the Javascript monstrosity called YouTube or the video presented there. Running old computers makes the most sense for offline usage (for example old games on outdated old Windows)