The MacBook Pro Saga Continues

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
07/30/2015 at 18:00 • Filed to: None

I am using the machine right now, and it seems to be OK. The battery is not installed, and there is some heat on the MagSafe adapter and around the left speaker, but it is working as it should. I did attempt a memory upgrade yesterday, and is typical for this junkyard machine (early 2008 MBP 2.4 GHz - A1260), it didn’t exactly go according to plan.

The idea was to pop a couple of 2GB SODIMMs pulled from one of two PC notebooks I have. When I tried 4GB, with either pair, I couldn’t get the machine to boot. It would power up, sort of, with the optical drive making a bit of noise and the light on the front would come on, albeit somewhat dim, but the display never illuminated and there was never a bootup chime. I did reset the SMC and cleared the PRAM.

One or two sticks of 2GB, it didn’t seem to matter. I believe that these sticks were a little faster than the machine requires (PC2-6400 vs the required PC2-5300), but that shouldn’t be a problem, right? It hasn’t been an issue in any other machine I’ve upgraded in 20+ years.

I did find that if I put one of the original 1GB sticks in the lower slot and one of the 2GB sticks in the upper slot the machine would boot, operate normally, and report a total of 3GB, with System Profiler showing the memory as running at 667 MHz. Any ideas as to what I need to do to get this thing to see a full 4GB? It is capable of seeing 6GB, so 4GB shouldn’t be an issue...

DISCUSSION (7)

roflcopter > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/30/2015 at 18:05

Macs don't down-clock ram speeds if both are faster than it was made to use, if you run one that is the correct speed and another that is faster it can usually handle that alright though.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > roflcopter
07/30/2015 at 18:07

But shouldn’t I be able to run two sticks that are faster than it requires?

ttyymmnn > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/30/2015 at 18:10

I’ve upgraded RAM in Macs for years, but I’ve never used mixed sticks and I’ve never put in anything other than what it asks for. And I’ve never had any problems. So I can’t really offer any suggestions other than “only put in what it is asking for and do it in matched pairs.”

Nibby > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/30/2015 at 18:17

That gen of Macs are really picky about RAM.

roflcopter > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/30/2015 at 18:35

As Nibby said, this generation is super picky. Basically the short answer is no, you can’t. You need at least one stick that is the proper speed. This is because the initial speed query that the EFI system does is done at a certain bitrate and it needs to get a reply it understands(which it won’t because the stick replies natively). Sorry if that explanation is a bit vague, I haven’t dealt with that side of things in a while.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > roflcopter
07/30/2015 at 18:42

Thanks for the info. I had no idea this thing would be so picky; I thought I was doing a good thing by purchasing faster memory in order to give myself a little more flexibility, but it appears that this plan backfired on me.

Conversely, it sounds like I can just buy one stick of PC2-5300 and continue to use PC2-6400 in the other instead of buying 2 matched sticks of 5300.

roflcopter > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/30/2015 at 18:48

That *should* work, and would be what I would attempt doing instead of buying all new everything. Good luck with it!