Whether You're Running OS 9 or X, Bad RAM Can Crash Your Mac

While I was out in California this summer, my dad experienced more problems with his Blue & White G3. His main complaint was that it kept crashing - even though it was running Mac OS X 10.3. I had done several things to upgrade it the last time I was there, and when I left it had been running fine.

While it had worked fine under Mac OS 9, OS X required more memory. 256 MB was a good amount for OS 9, and it's a basic amount for OS X, but running more applications required more RAM. Microsoft Office was a notable one, especially when we installed the new 2004 version. Photoshop was also lagging behind a little bit, and just general performance of the Finder and launching applications seemed poor.

The solution was to buy more RAM, so the last time I was out there we decided to order some RAM from an online discount memory supplier. I believe we bought an additional 256 MB for around $50, and the machine started running a lot faster.

That was until after I left, when my dad said that he couldn't print - the computer would just freeze. I knew that the printer was selected properly, so it seemed to make no sense. If anything, I'd expect OS 9 or Windows 95/98 to have these kinds of problems, not OS X.

When I tried it for myself, it printed fine. Strange.

Then I went to run Software Update, which promptly quit on me, followed by the whole machine locking up.

After a few tries, I finally got it to download the 10.3.5 update - but halfway through the installation, it froze. The computer wouldn't restart, so I figured I'd boot from the CD and do an Archive and Install to repair the system, as obviously that's why it was crashing.

Except when I tried to Archive and Install, it said there was an error and the job couldn't be completed!

Disk First Aid found a couple minor problems with the hard drive, but nothing that would've prevented the installation from completing. I then remembered that the new 80 GB hard drive my dad had purchased was still sitting around. Since it was incompatible with the blue G3's hard drive controller, we had never installed it.

I connected the CD-ROM to the hard drive controller as Master, the new 80 GB hard drive to the CD-ROM/Zip controller, and set it as Master as well. I booted from the CD-ROM and attempted to install OS X 10.3 on the new drive. "There was an error with the disk" it told me. Impossible - it's a brand new hard drive, and there's nothing wrong with the CD-ROM installer disc, as that was the same one we'd already used to install OS X on the G3.

I figured I'd give OS 9 a shot, and the machine booted off my dad's 9.0.4 CD-ROM. I tried to install a basic system on the hard drive - and the computer froze again.

At this point, I wasn't sure what else we could do. At first I suspected that the machine was overheating, but then I remembered that we had installed some new RAM not that long ago.

I removed the new RAM, and OS X installed on the new hard drive without a problem. Then I ran Software Update and installed a few other applications without a single freeze or crash.

Unfortunately, 256 MB wasn't enough to run OS X 10.3 plus all of the applications that we'd installed, so buying some new RAM was in order.

I thought the best idea was to buy RAM from a reputable company, so we went to Fry's and bought RAM from them. It cost a little bit more, but it's brand name and comes with a warranty.

The computer's been fine ever since we installed it.

I was searching for RAM online afterwards, curious to see how Fry's price of $98 compared to prices on the Internet. I found that it was pretty similar to brand-name RAM prices.

However, Other World Computing offers it's own brand of RAM, along with a lifetime warranty, for less than half of what we paid! If we'd known, we probably would have ordered it from them.

Either way, I think it's probably worth spending a little bit more on RAM. Given the choice between spending an extra $30 in the first place or $100 of your time to try to fix a system that keeps crashing, I'd rather spend the extra $30 up front.