I fix computers for my friends, and also sometimes buy broken computers to fix and resell. Because of this, I have huge amounts of computer parts. Is there a way for me to test RAM sticks without having them inside of a computer? Most of my spare RAM sticks are 200 or 204-pin SO-DIMM for laptops. It would save me a lot of time if I could slide a stick into a machine and have it tell me if it worked or not.
They make hardware memory testers. You can find some with a google search. I don’t have a specific one to recommend as I’ve never used them.
This one is over $5,000 for the unit plus SODIMM adapters:
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/innoventions/ramcheck/ramchecklxddr32.htm
If you’re doing this as a hobby, a spare machine with a copy of MemTest86 is probably the way to go.
That’s a fortune. Thanks for the help, I will keep a cheap PC around for this kind of thing.
A very big chunk of the Automatic Test Equipment industry consists of memory testers. Bigger memories take more time to test. You can’t afford them. There are well know algorithms for memory test far better than just checking each location to see if it can hold a one and a zero. Cells interfere with each other, and in some cases cells can only retain a value for a limited amount of time.
The algorithms are classified by how many passes they have to make through the memory - good ones range from 7n to 13n. So, if a memory passes a simple test but still fails in a system, you might want to use a better algorithm.
Another problem is that the patterns have to be applied to the memory at full speed to catch some defects, and you can’t do that within a PC.
Here is a pdf of a short class section on memory test which hits the high points. Google memory test algorithms for lots more.
There are lots and lots of papers and two books I know of on this.