Thinkpads Forum

I bought a IBM 600X (Intel Pentium III 500 MHZ) second hand, in which some upgrades already had been made. But if I interpret the situation the original memory size is only 64MB. Later it has beem upgraded to 192 MB by installing to additional 64 MB memory cards in the two available slots.

Now, I my have an opportunity to by a 128 MB memory card second hand, that should be suitable. My questions are

(1) I was thinking about removing one of the 64 MB cards and installing the 128 MB card (=256 MB of memory). Is there any problem with this? For instance, any problems connected with having additional cards that are of different sizes (128 and 64)?

(2) Is it done by simply replacing the card in the slot, or do I need to do some additional reconfiguration of the system?

(3) Given the system information I have provided, is there any point in upgrading? I am running XP, and there seems to be some things that are rather slow, presently.

The 64mb is in onboard memory.

You may mix and match the ram sticks as you'd like, as long as they are PC100 (maybe pc66), 144pin Sodimm sticks. You can even add two 256mb PC100 Low Density (16 chips, 8 on each side) sticks and bring your system up to 576MB ram (256 x 2 +64mb onboard).

If you add a 256mb PC100 Low Density stick (as mentioned above), you might have to update the BIOS.

If you want to just add one or two 128mb sticks, then no additional configuration is needed.

I am running XP, and there seems to be some things that are rather slow, presently.

Adding more RAM s always good,there's never a downside...BUT remember you have a 600x with a 500Mhz CPU and a 4mb video card..Don't expect miracles...

BillD wrote:

I am running XP, and there seems to be some things that are rather slow, presently.

Adding more RAM s always good,there's never a downside...BUT remember you have a 600x with a 500Mhz CPU and a 4mb video card..Don't expect miracles...

The main problem I would like to do something about is that I experienced some crashes when I was working on a wordperfect document containing many footnotes, and had a few (automatically updating) webpages open as well. I was hoping that extending the memory to 256 MB could help me avoid these kinds of quite annoying situations.
Is there any "rule of thumb" concerning the processor and memory combination?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'rule of thumb'.. But as the other poster here pointed out any low density PC100 RAM should work,no matter what the size is..

But again you're dealing with an 'older' computer,don't expect a speed demon...

BillD wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by 'rule of thumb'.. But as the other poster here pointed out any low density PC100 RAM should work,no matter what the size is..

Well, I was thinking about the relation between frequency and memory. I suppose there are limits to what can be achieved by increasing the memory, when the processor is only 500 MHz? My question concerns what is worth doing, and what is not. Will I notice the difference if I go from 192 MB to 256 MB? I am not using this computer for anything else than browsing, and writing.

If you are running XP, I recommend atleast 256mb, but if you are getting a good deal on the 128mb stick (ie. less than $20) then 192mb would be fine for what you are doing.

recommend 2*256M (16 chips) 512MB. We tested this on 600E. Very good.

OK, now I finally got my 128MB stick, and it seems to work alright. So now I have 64MB + 64 MB +128 MB = 256 MB. But I had a problem with the installation. That is, I only get it working by placing the new stick on the right side. I tried it on the left side also (upside down), but then I only have 128 MB, so the system does not recognise it. So, what I want to ask is whether these sticks really are right or leftsided? The thing is that I couldn't find any text on the stick saying so.

for 600E 600X, that is right. Some 128M memory have to be placed on the correct side. Or you will have half memory space.