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http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/04/17/apple.til/

Apple TIL explains firmware update problems

updated 09:35 am EDT, Tue April 17, 2001

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Apple last week quietly posted more official information about its RAM-disabling firmware update in its Tech Info Library:

The Apple 4.1.7 and 4.1.8 firmware updates incorporate a number of fixes that dramatically improve system stability and performance. The update also includes a check that validates whether the memory installed in the computer is compatible. This check was added to help alleviate random crashes and stability issues. This memory test disables memory DIMMs that are found to be out of specification, and DIMMs that cannot be determined to be compatible. As a result, some third-party memory that was recognized by previous versions of firmware may no longer be recognized after the updates.

by MacNN Staff

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04/17, 10:02am | report spam | close Reply | delete
why wait till now?

If they would have just put this information with the update in the first place, they would have avoided a lot of ill will.

0

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04/17, 10:06am | report spam | close Reply | delete
hey!

try downloading DIMMfirstaid.sit

http://macnn.com/news.php?id=5242

it worked for me

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04/17, 10:13am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: why wait till now?

If RAM makers would have just sold compatible DIMMs in the first place, they would have avoided a lot of ill will.

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04/17, 10:19am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Good Apple / Bad Apple

Apple's decision to include a RAM validator to help alleviate random crashes and stability issues deserves to be commended.

Apple's decision of not telling the end-user about this "tidbit" before they installed the RAM update deserved to be booed !

Openness always pays.

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04/17, 11:25am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: why wait till now

Hey, had you read the commentary and understood it, you would have know it was not an issue of meeting specs or disabling Bad or good RAM. I'd advise you to read up a little on what was actually changed. What Apple wanted was not in the spec for their RAM or for general RAM specs. Hence, they do not deserve to be commended. Who needs to be commended is those RAM dealers who have stuck to their warranty on the RAM and bailed Apple out of a lot more bitching customers. For me, it cost a total of $15 to ship the RAM back, and the reseller another $15 to ship it back, and it cost Apple much of my support. The only winner: Fedex.

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04/17, 11:45am | report spam | close Reply | delete
The PR may not be good

If poor ram guienly causes random crashes I commend it.

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04/17, 12:22pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Apple Firmware minefield

After Apple's firmware update for B&W G3s that prevented upgrading to a G4 chip(which was closely followed by them releasing a G3 machine with a G4 chip) I've learned to never install firmware upgrades until I've checked postings to determine what Apple has disabled with it! That mistrust was confirmed with this upgrade! That Apple then announces a ram sale at 2 1/2 to 3X street retail to restore goodwill with customers whose fully functional ram they disabled is so amazingly clueless as to be dazzling!
Will their next firmware update disable any CPU more than 10 months old? They could then explain that they needed to ensure that our machines had fully compliant metal or plastic cases!

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04/17, 01:00pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Apple specs unchanged

Apple did NOT change their RAM specs. Apple has always had higher specs than other PC manufacturers.

The firmware update only enforces those specs.

Weak RAM specs cause lots of headaches; I am glad Apple has higher standards.

However, I agree Apple should have been more vocal about the potential loss of RAM in their initial firmware release info.

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04/17, 01:01pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RAM sale

The RAM sale is for purchases with new machines. Hardly relevant to the firmware upgrade.

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04/17, 01:03pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
What is new?

How is this any different than what Apple said last time? I do not have a copy of the previous TIL, but this one sounds pretty much exactly the same as the last one.

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04/17, 01:19pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Re: why wait till now

"Hey, had you read the commentary and understood it, you would have know it was not an issue of meeting specs or disabling Bad or good RAM. I'd advise you to read up a little on what was actually changed. What Apple wanted was not in the spec for their RAM or for general RAM specs. Hence, they do not deserve to be commended."

Hello, moron.

From your almost incomprihensible writing, I believe that you were ridiculing someone for not being open-minded and 'reading up on the subject' before they made a decision to commend Apple. I may have this wrong however, because your message was somewhat garbled.

In any case, I do not know where you do your "reading up". You made some claim about it not having anything to do with specs or good or bad RAM. Except that it does. It doesn't randomly disable RAM, which is the only thing left. It doesn't disable all third party RAM either. Apple has provided memory manufacturers with the specifications that the "RAM disabler" in the firmware update is based upon. JEDEC (www.jedec.org) is a well known standards organization and their standards (including this one concerning RAM modules) are promoted by the IEEE, the ultimate standards organization. The RAM manufacturers need to be booed for not meeting these specifications. Apple needs to be booed for not warning its customers in advance. However, Apple could not be required to inform customers as they were only enforcing the current standards that they held.

So I don't know where you do your reading but maybe you should stay away from wherever it is that you do read. And so you know, go check out the website that the kind soul posted above for DIMMFirstAid. Its a great program and (if it can) will reporgram the EEPROM on the RAM chip to meet JEDEC specifications and 'bring your RAM back to life'.

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04/17, 01:29pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Info easier to find

The item posted by Apple in their TIL looks identical to the information previously located in the Apple Software Updates area. They've just made the information easier to find.

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04/17, 03:37pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Cas Latency

When I was looking in the RAM first aid window, it said that this memory (and showed a CL3) isn't compatible. Soon as I put in the faster CL2 memory, the RAM was working like a charm. Perhaps Apple also disabled the use of slower memory? Or is my incident just a a one timer?

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04/17, 05:24pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE:

Hey dude, namecalling isn't particularly productive and lacks

BTW, I was responding to a short post which said "the RAM was not compatible," and was sick and tired of those who bascially made assumptions about the nature of the problem. I still disagree with the notion that it was bad RAM, because it's a more complicated issue than that, and here's some of why: (from MacFixit)

"Basic explanation of the Problem: Apple, while previously recommending to those in their Developer Program to ship the faster 2-2-2 coded memory (i.e., Apple TIL article 58182), has now changed recommended CAS settings on the memory to 3. Essentially, Apple decided to slow the systems down somewhat for stability and reliability. Any RAM that is not coded to the latest JEDEC Standard EPROM and is hard-set to run at CAS-2 will be rejected as "out of spec" after the firmware upgrade in the G4. [Note: previous reports on MacFixIt suggest this may not exactly be the case.] This is NOT an indication of product quality or meeting Apple/Intel specifications.

Apple Test Lab personnel have indicated that they have essentially given up on the problem, leaving it to the memory manufacturers to solve the problem. The firmware upgrade is a one way ticket and cannot be reversed."

I can understand that the spec says that the CAS2 and 3 is supposed to be "both" programmed into the chip and that this response, from a chip maker, is somewhat misleading, but they clearly state that this was not part of the Apple spec prior to Firmware update. In fact, it states that they recommended the faster speed. That suggests that Apple's req. before the firmware update was less stringent than JEDEC. Who knows, but thanks very much for showing me how much you know about RAM.

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04/17, 06:24pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
bottom line is this......

For us to bicker over this misses the bigger point. This isn't the first time that Apple has misled it's customers after the fact. Case in point, any customer whom purchased Apple refurb gear with the 90 day warranty formerly had the option to extend that warranty via Apple care to a full three years. You could buy this extension anytime during the original 90 day warranty. Well, Apple recently pulled the plug on this program, stranding hundreds of customers retroactively in their 90 day warranties, and removing the option to extend. It didn't matter if you hadn't exercised the option, Apple simply left those customers high and dry without apology for this retroactive decision.

There are many horror stories such as this out of Apple since their return to profitability. This RAM issue is right in the fold. Most RAM suppliers I know of promoted the fast 2 spec RAM as the correct application for Apple machines. Changing this spec to promote system stability is the same situation all over again. Apple expects we, their loyal users, to shoulder the brunt of the resultant BS. Much like their recent release of OS X, or what I like to call Public Beta 2, we the users must pay for Apple's incomplete work, or unwillingness to develop products completely before releasing them.

This company is starting to show signs of the old drain spiral syndrome. They are essentially a "one trick pony", and that trick is starting to get very, very old. At this point I think it would actually be a benefit to the Mac community if a "real" company stepped forward, bought Apple, and put things back on track. I don't know who that would be, but at this point, seemingly anyone could do a better job. The arrogance of Apple is becoming more and more distasteful by the day, and as a loyal Mac professional, I'm not very happy about it.

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04/17, 06:32pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: bottom line

At this point I think it would actually be a benefit to the Mac community if a "real" company stepped forward, bought Apple, and put things back on track.

Why waste the effort. They should just sell the assets and give the cash to the stockholders.

- M. Dell

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04/17, 06:44pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re:

Essentially, Apple decided to slow the systems down somewhat for stability and reliability.

And if you read another article on MacFixIt (from the guy who wrote DimmCheck), he states that people keep misunderstanding 3-2-2 and 2-2-2 RAM with the CL2 and CL3 settings. Some people think that since Apple is using CL3, that's turning their RAM into 3-2-2 vs the 2-2-2 they have. Which it doesn't.

As I understand it, CL3 waits one more clock cycle before starting to put data on the bus (3 clock cycles vs. 2 in CL2 mode, something to do with making sure the previous data gets cleared out, I think), but then transfers the data to the bus quicker (like 8ns vs 10ns in CL2 mode in 2-2-2 memory, 10ns vs 13ns in 3-2-2 mode). So it really depends on the data being accessed. If you have more random bytes being retrieved, CL2 would probably be somewhat faster than CL3. But if you're data is accessed in a more serial mode (which in general most is, probably), then once you get past the initial slowdown waiting for the latency clock cycle, the rest of your data should stream faster.

So if you have 2-2-2 memory, you would WANT the CL3 mode setting in your chip, otherwise, you're no better off than with a 3-2-2 chip.

And I still haven't seen any memory vendor come out with actual "Here's what the specs were before apple changed them last month". Most vendors probably verified their ram by the simple test of "Does the mac recognize it?", not "Is it programmed to meet the specs."

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04/17, 09:04pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Bad Memory[ories]

Ok, so I had cheep memory that went bad due to the upgrade - it took 10 day and an hour or two on hold but I was able to get replacements for my SODIMS and now I'm working again.

Only wish the $286 I spent 1 yr ago bought me more than 256 meg...

Perhaps it would have been much nicer to take a walk down to J & R [NYC Apple dealer] and just plopped down $75 for some fresh RAM and not waste my time...

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Apple TIL explains firmware update problems

updated 09:35 am EDT, Tue April 17, 2001

why wait till now?

hey!

Re: why wait till now?

Good Apple / Bad Apple

Re: why wait till now

The PR may not be good

Apple Firmware minefield

Apple specs unchanged

RAM sale

What is new?

Re: Re: why wait till now

Info easier to find

Cas Latency

RE:

bottom line is this......

Re: bottom line

Re:

Bad Memory[ories]

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Apple TIL explains firmware update problems

updated 09:35 am EDT, Tue April 17, 2001

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why wait till now?

hey!

Re: why wait till now?

Good Apple / Bad Apple

Re: why wait till now

The PR may not be good

Apple Firmware minefield

Apple specs unchanged

RAM sale

What is new?

Re: Re: why wait till now

Info easier to find

Cas Latency

RE:

bottom line is this......

Re: bottom line

Re:

Bad Memory[ories]

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