RAM won't show as installed

solomon415 said:

I have a G4 Power Mac with Mirrored Drove Doors. I bought another gig of RAM for it today in the form of two 512 MB boards. I opened the tower and installed them nice and snug, making sure they were facing the correct direction. When I turned on my machine and went to my Apple- about this Mac menu, they RAM doesn't show up. It still says I only have 1 Gig.

To my horror, I realized that I installed the RAM without disconnecting the power cord from the machine- A stupid mistake indeed. Is there a chance I fried my RAM or something?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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pigoo3 said:

Assuming that the power cord thing didn't cause a problem...where did you get the ram?

Are you 100% sure that it's Macintosh compatible?

- Nick

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solomon415 said:

Yes. I bought it from a store that exclusively sells Mac products that I've been going to for years.

Something far worse has now happened though. This is becoming a nightmare.
I tried installing the RAM facing the other direction and my OS wouldn't boot up when I turned the machine on. I opened the tower back up, and turned the RAM boards back around. I noticed they were pretty hot. I let them cool down before I closed the unit back up, and turned it back on. This time I heard 3 simple low beeps and my drive light flashed. Still the OS won't boot. I've never had a single problem with this Mac and have kept it in immaculate condition. What went wrong?!?! Help!!!

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pigoo3 said:

I hate to say this...but if you really want to know what went wrong...it's that you decided to start poking around inside your computer without sufficient knowledge or experience!!!

You should not be able to reverse the direction the ram is installed. It only fits in one way!

It sounds like you are doing one wrong thing after another...before getting the advice of others!

You may have already trashed your computer. Basically you did the equivalent of throwing a plugged in hair dryer into a tub of water while someone was in it!!!

At this point what you should try to do is:

- remove all of the ram
- separate the ram into your "old" ram & your "new" ram
- startup the computer with no ram installed, and see what happens
- if the computer seems to start up ok (no beeps) then turn off the computer, and install one stick of your old ram. Then restart.
- if it restarts ok...then install the 2nd stick of your old ram.

If it starts up ok...post your results here...and we will proceed further.

Good luck,

- Nick

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solomon415 said:

Anyhow- Fortunately, I think I escaped relatively unscathed or got extremely lucky. I removed the two new 512 boards of Ram and was able to reboot just fine with my original 1 gig. It appears that the new RAM boards were causing the issue. I researched on Apple's website and 3 beeps means that no RAM banks passed memory testing. I'm now surmising that either the RAM boards I have are not compatible or are defective in some way. It was kind of hard for me to get them to lock in place, but I thought that was normal because I had the same issue when I installed last time.

Anyway, I deserve to get flamed. I almost fried my lovely Power Mac. Here is the type of RAM I attempted to install:

NANYA brand, DDR 333MHz, CL-2.5

Any suggestions? Thanks again!

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dtravis7 said:

Do they also say PC2700 on them? 333Mhz is what PC2700 RAM is.

What store did you get them from? I know the bay area pretty well.

Also be SURE that the little notch on the bottom of the stick that is Off Center lines up with the little rise in the ram slot.

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pigoo3 said:

I apologize for sounding harsh...but in the approximate 20 minutes between your two postings above you went from bad to worse before waiting for someone to answer your initial posting.

I would return that new ram if you can...and purchase some new ram from these guys:

Memory Upgrades for your Apple PowerMac G4 "FW 800" 2x1.25GHz at OtherWorldComputing.com

They are a very good place to buy from.

It's good to hear that your computer is still ok & no permanent damage was done. Again I apologize for being a bit harsh.

- Nick

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solomon415 said:

I really hope I didn't fry the 2 RAM slots by placing the RAM in there facing the wrong direction. I would assume they can't be individually replaced and I would have to replace the entire RAM board area...

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Chilbear said:

You can check out this possibility buy moving the now "good" ram into the open slots - one a time.

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solomon415 said:

Ok just installed my old RAM successfully in both of the other RAM slots. They are working fine. Whew!! thx for the advice.. Had to have been the new RAM!!

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