On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 03:44:15PM +0200,
j.andradas@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> last week, when booting a virtual machine, I discovered that my laptop
> only recognizes one of the RAM modules (supposed to be 1 GB, but truly
> providing 880 MB). I realized this when VirtualBox complained that I had
> configured more than the available RAM to the virtual machine. I had not
> changed the virtual machine configuration, and the virtual machine had
> about 950 MB assigned (and my physical host, only had 880 MB).
>
> Since I previously had 2 GB of RAM, I assumed one of the chips was broken
> somehow. I replaced one of them, and I still got this output for the
> "free" command:
>
> $ free
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 902264 892608 9656 0 23624 621432
>
> So I put the original module back on, and changed the other one. I
> entered the BIOS, and it detected 2048 MB of RAM. I run a test on the
> memory (from the BIOS), and everything seemed allright. But my Debian
> keeps seeing only 902264 of RAM.
>
> I downloaded a new Kernel, re-compiled, but everything is still the same.
> I am running Debian Sid, if that could matter, but I can't see how that
> would affect the amount of RAM available.
>
> Running lshw, I get the following ouput:
>
> *-memory
> description: System Memory
> physical id: a
> slot: System board or motherboard
> size: 2GiB
> *-bank:0
> description: SODIMM DDR2 Synchronous 533 MHz (1.9 ns)
> product: 9905293-014.A00LF
> vendor: 7F98000000000000
> physical id: 0
> serial: 41CC9DE7
> slot: DIMM #1
> size: 1GiB
> width: 64 bits
> clock: 533MHz (1.9ns)
> *-bank:1
> description: SODIMM DDR2 Synchronous 667 MHz (1.5 ns)
> product: 9905295-066.A00LF
> vendor: 7F98000000000000
> physical id: 1
> serial: 66078142
> slot: DIMM #2
> size: 1GiB
> width: 64 bits
> clock: 667MHz (1.5ns)
>
> Could the difference between the clocks available on the RAM chips only
> allow for one of them to be used?
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
> Best Regards,
>
> --