[nmkramer]

Hey guys!

Once again, I call upon your infinite wisdom.

I installed a 1G Kingmax stick yesterday in the hopes that I could get a working RAM stick for less than what Crucial charges. I may have committed a karmic error. Allow me to explain:

After installing the new stick into my book, in the top slot, my book works for about 30 minutes. Then it crashes, displaying a weird half normal, half striped-out "You need to restart your computer" message.

Then it reboots fine. I check my diagnostics in System Profiler, and:
Last Run: 6/30/05 12:12 AM
Result: Failed
Failure type: Memory
Memory slot: SODIMM0/J25LOWER

OK. The lower slot is where my old, 512 MB, laptop included RAM is.

What gives? Did the old RAM crap out by itself? Did the new RAM affect it somehow? And is it common to see a new RAM stick (that's highly suspect already based on Kingmax reviews) work but an apple factory installed RAM stick crap out?

In any case I am running on 1GB of RAM and have had no stalls or hitches, so the Kingmax seems to work fine in the upper slot...

Thanks for your advice and help!

Happy 4th weekend!

-Nate

[nmkramer]

Looks like I found the culprit. My LOWER ram slot is nonfunctional now, regardless of the memory stick placed there. I did a ram switcheroo to verify this. I'm wearing out the screws on the memory plate... so I guess its time to call Apple...

I have a new question: should I send the laptop in with the original 512 stick ONLY? In other words, put it in the functional slot and send it back, and keep my 1 GB Kingmax? Maybe the Apple dude on the phone will fill me in on how it works...

[FFL]

I have a new question: should I send the laptop in with the original 512 stick ONLY

Yes, absolutely.

Any solutions for this? I am experiencing the same problem atm... :-(

[kretara]

From reading the apple boards this (dead memory slot in 15" and 17" newer PB's) is a common issue. What's more, there are enough people saying that they had this issue fixed by Apple only for it to crop up again that if i owned a newer 15 or 17" PB I would be rushing to buy applecare.
Is it me or does it seem like the build quality of ibooks and powerbooks has been dropping over the past few years?

[julesstoop]

The actual mechanical quality of the housing and seals has actually improved quite a bit with each revision/bump of the PowerBook-Al (at least as far as the 15" is concerned)
My brother works with a large Apple dealer, so he could show me the differences (they are really quite large)
As far as quality assurance is concerned, I think you are right, unfortunately.
So as general design seems to be improving, actual failure rates might rise.

[context]

Funny you mention about the internal quality. I work at a reseller and I've been nearly pissing my pants over the numbers of iMacs in for logic board replacement (understanding the capacitor failure) and the number of macs in general with hard drive failure. Its shocking and disheartening to see the major failure occurring on relatively new machines!

[bostongeek]

I just wanted to add that my PB 15" 1.5GHz which is about a year old is experiencing the non-functional lower-memory slot problem. Also, I had a major crash today ... as seen here.

There are lots of complaints cropping up... even an online petition which has gotten more than 500 signatures. This is definitely something that Apple needs to look into and fix out-of-warranty.