HELP - bricked DDR2 module [SOLVED]

[cbjaust]

TL;DR

How can a bricked module have its SPD reprogrammed if the motherboard won't boot with the module installed?

I have three kits of DDR2:

2 x Corsair XMS2 CM2X2048-6400C5 - 4GB kit DDR2-800 5-5-5-18 1.8v
2 x Crucial Ballistix BL12864AA106A.8FE5 - 2GB kit DDR2-1066 5-5-5-15 2.0v
2 x OCZ Titanium Alpha VX2 OCZTA1000VX22GK - 2GB kit DDR2-1000 4-4-4-12 2.2v

So I wanted to run 6GB of RAM in Dual Channel configuration on an ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe but the problem was that one each of the Crucial and OCZ modules are faulty. The faulty Crucial module just flat out won't post and the faulty OCZ module throws up erros in Memtest86+ (v5.01). The board posts and boots up with the Corsair kit and the modules from the Crucial and OCZ kits at DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 2.0v but only runs in Single Channel mode due to the mismatched modules. I got the idea that if the SPD of the OCZ and the Crucial modules were the same then I would get Dual Channel working which brought me to the problem of the bricked module. What I did was save the SPD info from the good Crucial module and write that information to the good OCZ module, resulting in the OCZ module causing a no POST situation. Bummer . Is there a way to recover this module because I know it is good with it original SPD info.

Thanks for reading.

[NEOAethyr]

Have you tried manually setting the cas latency and throwing the non-working stick in a slot after the working stick?
It should post and from there you can re-write the spd.

Make sure it's not after a cleared cmos, use the working stick to setup a config then put in the non-working stick beside it.

Do not try to hot swap, even though windows can be setup to hot swap the boards don't like it, the electricity going through the sticks will cling to the pins and when you yank it out to hot swap it it'll pull the some of the pins out with it.

Anyways it seems to me that maybe the ocz doesn't like cas5.
If you set cas4 with a diff stick, take it out afterwards and put in the ocz without clearing the cmos, it should post by it's self.
Even if it had a 0x00'ed spd at that point.

[Reefa_Madness]

The following is a link to a tutorial for doing this with Thaiphoon Burner. May be worth a try.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...-TUT-to-fix-it!

[Don_Dan]

No offense, but you should have taken a bit more care, the Crucial module is a 1GB single-sided module with 1Gb ICs ( most likely D9JKH ), while the OCZ module is a 1GB double-sided module with 512Mb ICs ( most likely D9GMH or D9GKX ). The tutorial posted by Reefa_Madness should be helpful, here you can find another tutorial on Thaiphoon Burner's official site.

[cbjaust]

Thanks for the responses. So there is some hope. I didn't realise that the layout of the Crucial and OCZ modules was different. Oh well.

[cbjaust]

Well, I had a go at resurrecting the bricked module and got it to work! I used a 2GB good module along with the bricked one and the motherboard would POST but would hang when it should have been handing off the booting to the OS. In this state the BIOS reported 3GB of memory with 2GB usable Booting up with the good module I was using and inserting the bad module while in the BIOS was a no go because even when exiting without saving the motherboard goes ahead and runs POST again instead of just continuing to boot. So in the end I decided to insert the module after POST was complete and just when the OS was starting to load. This resulted in a successful boot into Windows where I immediately ran SPDTool and loaded the OCZTA1000VX21G SPD Dump onto the bricked module. It worked which is awesome. Thanks again for the replies which gave me the idea that I could unbrick the memory module.

[Don_Dan]

I'm glad you were able to fix it, the Titanium Alpha are very nice sticks!

[cbjaust]

I'm glad you were able to fix it, the Titanium Alpha are very nice sticks!

Yes they are, and they look cool too:

[Reefa_Madness]

Glad to hear that you got it to work and thanks for sharing the steps that you took.

[Don_Dan]

Yes they are, and they look cool too:

I know, I own a kit of them as well.