Respectfully,
minimum requirements and
recommended requirements are separate things and need to be addressed separately. The Church has set the minimum for MLS running on Desktop 5.5 at 256MB. Is this an incorrect number? My experience has shown it's perfectly valid. I would even go so far as to guess that a large number of MLS machines throughout the world (if not the majority) are probably running with such a configuration. Obvioulsy, CHQ has faith it will work, or I'm sure they would have set the minimum to something different. (As far as I know CHQ has not come out with a churchwide
recommended requirement.)
enriquer wrote:Do you know if the onboard video steals any RAM?
Yes, but surprisingly very little.
enriquer wrote:I was on the phone with Jim from CHQ Membership Line on 1-9-08 triaging the stake computer which would not transmit and kept corrupting databases. Not sure if I included this detail in my earlier post or not. Anyway, after he diagnosed the problem he directed us to upgrade the systems to a minimum of 512mb of RAM. He added he was sending a message to our stake president advising him of this need for all our systems.
Now, here we need to be cautious. What is recommended by CHQ for one Stake to solve a specific problem, might not necessarily apply to the rest of the Church. Even though you and I might agree that 512MB sounds reasonable, I'm sure there are other factors we don't see. For example, if a Stake was close to upgrading their equipment, or perhaps their budget had already been exceeded for other pressing needs. I'm sure some Stake Presidents might even suggest, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
enriquer wrote:We couldn't find two 256mb sticks readily. When we did it was pricey so for $12 more we got two 1gb sticks. You see smaller memory sizes are just not being made any more.
I personally have seen the benefit of additional ram first hand. Again, not sure if I mentioned this earlier or not.....but these systems are finicky. They require ram in matched pairs and not all the ram we tried worked. We tried Kingston, Micron (Crucial), Patriot, Super Talent and PNY none of them worked. My earlier post did contain the info about the Corsair RAM which we did get at NewEgg (w/Free Shipping.) We even updated the BIOS with no improvement. These memory sticks had identical specs....not sure if it was a voltage issue or what....but the Corsairs worked on the first try. So I was posting from "actual" first hand experience.
I'm sure whoever purchased the RAM did what they felt they needed to do. Having problems with a wide variety of RAM (being finicky, as you put it) is sometimes caused by other things. As you suggested, one possibility is the required voltage provided by your motherboard may not have been sufficient for them to run error free. A faulty capacitor might allow just a bit too much noise on the lines. There are many possibilities. It kind of goes back to my point about this being a unique situation that may not apply to everyone.
Just a side note, these Dell systems don't have a strict requirement of replacing RAM with matched pairs (like RDRAM systems), you just lose a smidgen of performance by having them run in single-channel mode instead of dual-channel, but it's hardly noticeable in all but the most demanding situations.
I'm sincerely pleased your system is running fine. Being a retired engineer, I'm cursed with looking at things not for how great they are, but rather with an eye of how I can improve it.
These MLS computers are truely miraculous time savers compared with the "olden days". Can they be improved upon? Of course. Is there a blanket policy in place to do so? Not to my knowledge.
BTW, the RAM that upgraded some of our systems came from my basement workshop archives, so the cost to the Stake was nil, but not everyone has a system builder they can call on.
