[ale] Losing stability

[JK]

Jim Popovitch wrote:

> On Mon, 2006-10-30 at 12:50 -0500, Matt Kubilus wrote:
> 
>>memtest86 is only really useful to prove that the memory is bad, not
>>that the memory is good.
> 
> 
> It's orientation is binary, right?  If not bad, then good.  Or am I
> missing something?

memtest86 essentially writes and reads specific bit
patterns to every location in RAM, and ensures that the
data read is identical to the data written.  But it cannot
test every conceivable bit pattern and access sequence.
If memtest86 does not find a problem, that only means that
its tests didn't tickle any condition that causes the
memory to fail.  Of course that will always be true for
good RAM, but it might also be true for RAM that is
damaged in some very subtle way.

-- JK