[LauraOliver]

I decided to upgrade the ram on my 12 year old Dell Power Edge Server 1300-500. The exisiting ram had a lable with these numbers
d32m72s4r8v36T100.d
1B52R329E22-A6F
004 XA0661
0100-222622R
So with the help of an online chat guy I order 3 sticks of what we thought matched....32x72-100MHz PC100, 168p DIMM, 3.3v, Sync, ECC, Registered.

With the 1 older and 3 new sticks installed I get the following message: Alert, unbufferred and registered DRAM DIMMS can not be mixed.

The online chat guy assures me that both the old ram and the new ram are registered and that I am only getting the message because I need a BIOS update.

I rebooted the server and pushed F2 and see that my server has BIOS A07 and the ram says 256MB ECC DRAM.

Is the error message correct? Or do I need a BIOS update?

[Triple6]

If you boot with one of the new sticks, does the RAM description change to include "Registered" or "Buffered" in the description? Also, does the old RAM have a small chip or several small chips that run horizontally below the rest chips?

You can do the BIOS update if you like, there's no mention of memory compatibility in the newer releases though.

[LauraOliver]

The server will not even turn on with any of the new ram sticks.
We have tried a single stick.
We have tried a pair.
We have tried all three.
It will turn on with the old stick and the 3 new sticks, but it only shows 256, not 1GB.
When we get a slack time I will remove the old ram and look for those chips.
Thanks
Laura

[flavallee]

The Dell PowerEdge 1300 500 Server uses 168-pin, PC100, 3.3V, ECC, Registered SDRAM modules.

It has 4 slots and supports a maximum of 1024 MB(1 GB) of RAM, so that means that no more than 256 MB can be installed in each slot.

http://www.dellmemoryram.com/dell-co...ge1300500.html

The most current BIOS update for it is A12

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/...eId=2731126903

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[Triple6]

I doubt the BIOS update will get them to work, but you can try as there may be undocumented changes regarding the RAM.

More likely the RAM is incompatible. Where did you buy it from?