This isn't exactly a hardware modification or hack but a general question about Ram I tend not to find an answer for. At Pricewatch there seems to be different quality of ram... of course the worst being cheapest, generic, and not supporting AMD and INTEL chipsets is about $22 for a stick of 256mb.

Well will apple support low quality ram? I have heard of people buying the ram trying it out and working; but I remain skeptical about throwing $22 in the wind to find out myself. Example Link: This yahoo store.

As you can see if it did work right like all other ram, (I have had low quality ram in my PC before and seen a stick in an old imac dv which is the 4x dram) it would be cost effective to simply purchase 4 sticks and make an old g3 hum at 1gb of memory. It sounds almost too promising to get a gig of memory for under $100.

I've searched and found no real conclusive evidence with mac compadibility or incompadibility. Or draw backs for that matter. I have heard 'if the ram works, it works!' a few times. I even had a former friend in the tech field explain that it is more compadible in some systems (which I have come to find was totally bull).

If someone could: Please demystify this for me. I'm looking on putting about a gig in a G3 Blue and White maxing it out.

Thanks
Andrew

just buy these for about 5$ more. http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Item.cfm?ID=3423&Item=OWC100SD256324

You're my personal jesus and all... and will probably get those; but the question is still there.

I am going to go through some of the professional service manuals from years past a friend gave me on cd to see if I can find anything.

well, I am no expert on the matter, but, as I understand it its like anything else, you get what you pay for. With bad ram you will sometimes find that your system doesn't function as well as you would like. There may be errors more often and whatnot. This is something that I experienced with my powerbook when I got some generic ram. I replaced the ram and all the problems were fixed. I think that the main difference is how meticulous the manufacturing process is. In other words, the cheaper, generic ram is manufactured under less strict conditions leading to more defects and less than perfect chips. Whereas the brand name more expensive chips have gone through a process that is more careful.

Don't get me wrong, there are acceptions to everything. You can probably get generic ram that is just as good or better than brand name ram. However, I think the chances are better that you will get a good, solid stick of ram from a reputable manufacturer.

Maybe this helps. :huh:

before I had 1GB I had 512 and I had a 128 stick of generic pc ram in the mix. it worked totally fine but it slowed down my xbench memory scores about 20%. remember that all the ram in a system can only run as fast as the slowest dimm.

check out this link for more specifics:

http://www.macgurus.com/products/motherboards/mbppcg3bw.php

I know. Thanks for the input.

It was just I have heard cases of iBooks, G4s, and older iMacs, accepting the generic or first gen ram chips. Personally when it came to upgrading the last gen G4 (2gb ram) I just went ahead and picked up some Kingston ValueRam 3200 @ 512mb. I was hoping for some Cosair Extreme series but I thought it as overkill since we're just running digital performer. I was hoping there would be a cheap solution to older macs for testing purposes - which it seems like $28 is if from the link zenstate provided.

I have been to those local computer shows and seen people bring a bag of old ram for trade in which is all working but it would be PC100 and below. What horrors they brought to my attention when the traveling venues just put it back out on the table as generic... which I have picked some up there before for older PCs.

I think its best stated now that I am looking at the mods that college student can afford and doing them one at a time. When I reach that limitation I'll go ahead and buy the other things.

how much ram does the B&W come with?

There are two:
1. Ebay *sparkle... shimmer* comes with 448mb, but I am not sure in what configuration.
2. Old Studio - Comes with about 384mb. Originally used in an old studio and was shipped to us when they got a better one.

The last gen G4 is maxed out at 2gb of ram. We're doing a lot of video, audio, and other types of editing with programs that eat ram. We had problems at 1gb of memory with a dual G4... so we bumped it up to 2gb and it seems to be running fine now.

I'm with jacob on this one. You do get what you pay for. My power supply died in this machine about 15 minutes ago. This was because I was using a crappy one that came with a cheap case. Knowing that this would happen, I got a new one before this happened so I could replace it when it did. Now all my problems on this pc are fixed. Easy. Also with ram. I was working on a graphite iMac yesterday at work and OS X kept kernal panicing. I unplugged it flipped her over, and opened up the airport/ram door to find the stock 128mb stick and a cheap generic 128 meg stick. I replace the generic one and didnt have any other problems with it.