Re: memtestPPC ?

[Matt Christian <mattc@visi.com>]

"Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> writes:

> The x86 world has a stand-alone memory test program called
> memtest86 that boots from a floppy. This is great, because it
> can test all the memory in the system. It's only a few kB in
> size, and can move itself about as needed. It uses direct VGA
> text memory access for output.

memtest86 is a great program for memory testing on the x86 platform.
However, memtest86 doesn't help us at all on PowerPC now does it? :P

> So now I have a Mac with some bad memory, and... what do I do?
> MacOS seems to test memory at boot, but doesn't reliably find
> a problem. Maybe 15% of the time I get an error message.

My first suggestion would be to contact the place where you bought the
memory.  Many memory vendors have lifetime warranties against failures
in their memory modules so you may be able to get a free replacement.

> Any hope of a stand-alone program that would take advantage of
> the various PowerPC features (cache control & AltiVec prefetch)
> to find memory problems?

There is a memory tester for Unix/Linux that compiles and runs on
Linux/PowerPC.  However, I don't think it takes advantage of any PowerPC
specific features, just "normal" memory testing.  In case you're
interested, here's the info:

memtest/memtester
http://www.qcc.sk.ca/~charlesc/software/memtester/

  About memtest

   memtest is a utility for testing the memory subsystem in a computer to
   determine if it is faulty. The original source was by Simon Kirby
   <sim@stormix.com>. I have by this time completely rewritten the
   original source, and added many additional tests to help catch
   borderline memory. I also rewrote the original tests (which catch
   mainly memory bits which are stuck permanently high or low) so that
   they run approximately an order of magnitude faster.

It is freely available and licensed under the GNU GPL.

I've used it on my Linux/PowerPC machine and it seems to run fine.  I
cannot attest to how well it catches memory errors because afaik my
machine does not have any faulty memory.

- Matt

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Matt Christian - mattc@visi.com
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