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Beige G3 Tower Memory Question
Posted by: Tempest on 2016-02-03 10:13:28
I have a Beige G3 tower that I decided to max out the memory in (768 MB) just because I could and the memory was cheap.  However now I'm finding that the first time I turn it on, the system will hang with a gray screen when it begins to load the OS.  If I reboot it will work just fine (all memory is accounted for too), it's just the first time from a cold boot that this happens.  The system did not do this before I updated the memory (I think it had 320MB in it before) .   Any idea what could be wrong and how to fix it?  It's not a huge issue, it's just sort of annoying.

Posted by: EvilCapitalist on 2016-02-03 11:06:16
How long is it hanging? 

If I'm not mistaken, that's just the machine going through the cold boot memory test.  You can disable that under the Memory control panel; if you hold option and command, then open the control panel the option to turn it on or off should appear.

Posted by: Tempest on 2016-02-03 11:33:39
You know, I never checked.  I think I gave it about 10 seconds or so and then declared it 'hung'.  I'll look into this tonight and let you know.

Posted by: Brett B. on 2016-02-03 14:39:59
I believe this is a totally normal thing - both of my beige G3's have 768MB RAM and they both hang like you describe, but eventually do power up.  It freaked me out at first.  If you want to speed things up, just push command-control-power right after you hear the startup chime and it will skip the memory test and boot up immediately.

Posted by: Tempest on 2016-02-03 15:25:42
Ok it works, I guess I just needed to wait longer.  I don't see a way to disable it in the memory control panel (I'm using 9.2)

EDIT: Ah, I had to hold down Option and Command to get the option to show up.  Weird.

Posted by: Tempest on 2016-02-03 15:31:12
Interestingly that didn't fix the delay on startup.  Oh well, at least I know it's ok.

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