Hardware/ECC memory upgrade question

[chy at genuity.com (Chuck Young)]

Howdy,

I have a couple of older boxen (PIII, PII and PI respectively) that I want to
upgrade RAM on, and I would like to buy (Micron branded) online and save the
shipping costs of buying various kinds, etc.  But, they may not all be able to
run the same sticks - or maybe they can, hence the question.  From the
research I've done I understand ECC takes a slight performance hit (2-3%) but
runs in "high integrity" settings (like my personal workstations :-) ) to
correct for cozmik debris, and the like, rare as it is.

1) The PIII Compaq Deskpro manual states it can use ECC SDRAM - all set

2) The IBM 300 GL manual does not say either way that it CANNOT use ECC SDRAM,
but uses a BIOS value for the L2 cache that states I have 512k of L2 without
ECC, but (if I had it) I could select a L2 setting with ECC, which leads me to
believe it COULD also use ECC for the SDRAM, but I have no way of confirming
this, and I don't want the hassle of returning memory to an online vendor -
so, not sure about ECC

3) The FIC VA-503+ does not say anything about ECC or non-ECC either way and
is the oldest box I have - so, very unsure about ECC

Does anyone know if I sould buy 7 128 MB ECC SDRAM DIMMS and use them all in
these boxes, or if I should buy 4 non-ECC for the older boxes and 3 ECC sticks
for the Deskpro?  Honestly, I have no idea what to do, but want the ECC if it
will work.  Maybe memory errors are so remote I should just buy 7 units of the
non-ECC and get on with it?

Aargh...please help if you can...

---------------
Chuck Young
Security Consulting
Genuity E-Services
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