[comp.sys.sgi] Memory upgrades for 4D's

zanetti@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gianluigi Zanetti) (04/28/89)

We have several Iris 4D 20's and a 4D70 and they all want to have 
their memory upgraded, but SGI wants lots and lots of money to do it.

The memory seems to be in the form of 1Meg simms.  What is the preferred
style?  How fast do they have to be?  The reason I ask is that if we could
use mass market simms they would be at least half the price.

Thanks in advance

Steve Roy         ssr@acm.princeton.edu
Gianluigi Zanetti zag@acm.princeton.edu

davis@blake.acs.washington.edu (Darrell Davis) (04/29/89)

In article <8003@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> zanetti@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gianluigi Zanetti) writes:
>We have several Iris 4D 20's and a 4D70 and they all want to have 
>their memory upgraded, but SGI wants lots and lots of money to do it.
>
>The memory seems to be in the form of 1Meg simms.  What is the preferred
>style?  How fast do they have to be?  The reason I ask is that if we could
>use mass market simms they would be at least half the price.
>
>Thanks in advance
>

We recently bought several IRIS 4D 20's with 8 meg of memory and then upgraded
them to 16 meg ourselves.  SGI wanted about $ 1200  a meg for memory and we
paid $ 310 a meg on the open market.  We just specified 1 meg SIMMS, 100 nsec, 
and didn't have any trouble, they are quite easy to install, and you could 
probably coerce your local SGI person to help you out.  We bought our memory
from an place called "Sophisticated Circuits" here in Seattle, their phone 
number is: (206) 547-4779.  My impression is that the price has come down 
some from this figure. 


D

dunlap@bigboote.SGI.COM (D. Christopher Dunlap) (05/01/89)

In article <1793@blake.acs.washington.edu>, davis@blake.acs.washington.edu (Darrell Davis) writes:
> In article <8003@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> zanetti@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gianluigi Zanetti) writes:
> >
> >The memory seems to be in the form of 1Meg simms.  What is the preferred
> >style?  How fast do they have to be?  The reason I ask is that if we could
> >use mass market simms they would be at least half the price.
> >
> 
> We just specified 1 meg SIMMS, 100 nsec, 
> and didn't have any trouble, they are quite easy to install


Be VERY careful about this. 

The boards are EXTREMELY static sensitive. Static damage can be very 
insidious in that it may not effect the performance of the system
for as much as several months, and then start failing intermittently.

Be sure to use an anti-static surface and ground yourself and the
anti-static surface to the chassis of the system with anti-static 
straps. These can be had at any electronics supply place.

The sockets that the SIMMS go in can be broken easily. They are, as
Mr. Davis says, quite easy to install - but be careful.

The speed and size of the SIMMS isn't the only criteria for ensuring
that the SIMMS will work properly in any particular system. Computer
companies regularly qualify or disqualify manufacturers of various
components, and memory is no exception. Memory you get from Silicon
Graphics is warranted to work correctly in your system. Go to another
vendor and "you takes your chances".

So long....



chris



--

D. Christopher Dunlap		email: dunlap@sgi.sgi.com

Hardware Product Support 
Customer Support Division
Silicon Graphics Computer Systems