Baby Computer Steps

Posted Thu Jan 21, 2010 in

Tuesday night the Winder$ box popped a BSOD as I was sitting in WoW chatting with a couple of my guildmates. I decided to shut down the machine and pull the new RAM from the bus. It only took about five minutes.

While at the task, I pulled one of the original sticks from the bus and wrote down the manufacturer and model number. I know those 512MB sticks work in the machine. As a worst-case scenario, I could purchase four additional sticks of 512MB (of the same model) and install them. That would provide 4GB of RAM.

The 4GB of RAM is not a lot anymore, depending on the application. Right now the machine splits its time as a modeling machine and a playing machine. But, if things were to change very much, I could certainly press it into service as a workstation and it could run GIS as well as other modeling software.

I’d like to keep my options open. If I could find four 1GB sticks that work and are stable, then I would have 6GB in the system — plenty for now, with the option of replacing the 512MB sticks with 1GB sticks at a later date. This would open up the system for a total of 8GB, which seems adequate to me.

For now I’m just watching the system burn-in. It needs time to prove it is reliable. When I get to that point, then I’ll think about next options.