weird ram question

[chukka01]

hey...

ok, a friend of mine is trying to upgrade his ram on his pc running windows 2000...

he had a 512mb ram stick in in one DIMM, then added a 64mb stick in the other DIMM....

but the end result was that he ended up with 420mb ram.... why does this happen?

[George Hallam]

How do you get those numbers?

If they are correct it is probably taken up by the onboard video

[chukka01]

that's the thing. i dont think it is...

because when i have the 512mb in there is comes up as 512mb, but as soon as i put in the 64mb it drops to 420.

[jlreich]

Older machines like that have many more compatibility issues than modern machines. Pre-DDR ram days were a mess at times. Even early DDR machines had some problems.

Make and model of the system would be helpful.