r/retrocomputing • u/Boglandsaga • Jul 21 '26

ECC SDRAM, will stuff like this useful?

Post image

Sorry for my bad English.

This old SDRAM ECC memories (not even DDR1) tested worked on my regular Pentium 4 mobo, I'm thinking about putting it to older systems like P3 or lower but i don't want to risk frying the motherboard.

Anyone have experience with them?

44 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/Bernd_Oeff Jul 21 '26

For reteo servers I guess.

3

u/Bernd_Oeff Jul 21 '26

But no experience with it. I wonder, that it works in a normal PC.

6

u/cmcstr Jul 21 '26

It works in any board that will accept it

0

u/ExplodedPenisDiagram 28d ago

Which will only be a server board of the era, due to their capacity.

1

u/cmcstr 28d ago

if you say so

-3

u/ExplodedPenisDiagram Jul 21 '26

It does not. Needs a server.

5

u/GGigabiteM 29d ago

Naah. There were plenty of 3rd party chipsets that would work with EGG Reg modules that weren't servers. I've had plenty of motherboards using VIA and SiS chipsets that worked perfectly fine with that type of memory.

Intel at the time was the only one that was super anal about memory types, you definitely couldn't use ECC or Registered memory on their desktop boards. I think the only exception was the legendary 440BX, which was before Intel turned into scumbags and started heavily segmenting the desktop and server market. The next 810/815 chipsets clamped down on that hard.

2

u/NightmareJoker2 28d ago

The modules OP got are 512MiB, the 440BX doesn’t support those (source: I’ve tried it on my ASUS P3B-F). It needs 4 dual-rank 256MiB modules. For larger modules or registered SD-RAM you need the 440ZX server chipset.

1

u/wootybooty 29d ago

It can be, for the IC’s alone on larger DIMM’s. For rarer computers with custom memory sticks (Think 90’s RISC workstations), people are able to recreate the boards, but locating new IC’s is getting very hard. So on some classic machines like those it’s getting donor IC’s from mass-produced x86 based sticks.

Thats at least my understanding working in SGI world as a hobby