[plug] older laptop ram compatibility and availaility

[Gavin Chester]

On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 15:52 +0800, Gavin Chester wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 15:14 +0800, Tomasz Grzegurzko wrote:
> > > Gavin Chester wrote:
> > > > I have an older laptop (cel 400, satellite 4090) housing only a single
> > 
> > Are you sure there's only one memory slot? The other may be under the
> > keyboard..?
> > 
> > Tomasz
> 
> Well, I could pull it apart to have a better look - again! ;-). I
> assumed it has only one and reports that as 128mb ... okay, I took the
> cover off to get to the easily accessible ram card and it shows
> signs/markings of being 64mb so I _must_ have two cards. Thanks, Tomasz.
> 
> Okay now my options are to get a single 128mb to give 192mb all up, or
> get 2x128mb cards, or even more depending on price. Either way, this is
> only a spare laptop and I don't want to spend any serious money on
> allowing me to multi-task on it better.
> 
> Gavin  

Immediately after sending my last post I found this reference:

"Please also notice that 256mb PC133 and 512mb PC133 are not backward
compatible with PC100 rams. [sic] 

Some old laptops have onboard PC66 ram that can not be removed, although
the websites tells you that you can use PC100 rams [sic], but most of
the time the PC100 ram will not work together with the onboard ram, you
must get PC66 rams [sic] or PC100 rams [sic] that are backward
compatible."

So it seems that from that info and Tomasz's advice that my most likely
bet would be one ram card is/maybe the only one changeable but it
probably only safe to consider only getting 128mb PC66 unless I find I
have two removable ram cards. 

The plot thickens ... Now you can further appreciate why I was jsut
chasing someone's cast-off ram in case it doesn't work :-) 

Gavin