Unfortunately, DDR
SDRAM (Also known simply as DDR RAM) has not been designed to be
idiot-proof, and if there's one thing people should have learnt by now, there are a lot of
idiots out there.
Last night, I was very tired and...(enough of the
excuses) OK, I put my
RAM in the wrong way round, resulting in
a terrifying smell of burning coming from the inside of my computer.
You see, this horribly embarrassing blunder never used to be possible with normal 168-pin single data rate
DIMMs. They were designed with two "keys" meaning the RAM could only be inserted one way into the socket. Something like this:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| |____| |____| |____| |____| : : |____| |____| |____| |____| |
|_________________________________________________________________|
############ ################### ################################
DDR RAM, on the other hand, has only
one key and it's only slightly
wonky, like so:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | : : | | | | | | | | |
| |____| |____| |____| |____| : : |____| |____| |____| |____| |
|_________________________________________________________________|
#################################### ############################
Frankly, this is shit -- if you'll excuse my bluntness -- because it doesn't serve its intended purpose. The key is very close to the middle of the stick, and it is quite easy (well, if you
force it hard enough it is,) to insert the wrong way round. I understand the need to have a different
pattern of keys to the old SDR, so it is impossible for
morons to insert the wrong sort of RAM, but this way leaves the door wide open for
morons to... well... it's all too
painful to recall. ;(
Update: The next day:
I inserted the burnt RAM (still smelling of burnt... whatever it is) into the burnt slot. What's more, the burnt RAM has one of the gold contacts missing. It is sitting right in front of me now on the desk. Guess what? My computer works. I'm in Linux right now, with broken RAM in a broken RAM slot. Evidently two brokens cancel to a working.
I shit you not.