[SLUG] Re: Memory tester boot disk

[Angus Lees <gusl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

\begin{Alex JuniorBurger}
>  I have a 486 that was to be set up as a gateway,
> however some strange crashes and suggestions have led
> me to believe that the memory (physical RAM and/or
> swap) may be corrupt. I know the HD is old, so I would
> hope the problem is with bad blocks on the disk, and
> not with the 8Mb RAM. If so, I could beef up another
> 486 with the extra 8Mb, and use that instead.
>  So, does anyone know of any boot disks available
> (running any OS, probably DOS) that contain a
> diagnostic tool for checking the integrity of RAM?

there's a few linux memory testers around. do a web search.

two linux ones that a simple "apt-cache search memtest" turned up are:

memtest86 (in the hwtools debian package) and
memtest (in the sysutils debian package)

just boot off a rescue disk (with the same libc, ie: a debian boot
disk for these binaries) and copy the binary over on another floppy.


also see badblocks(8) in e2fsprogs

-- 
 - Gus