-------- Forwarded Message --------
 > From: Thayne Harbaugh 
 > Reply-To: ecc@ya...
 > To: ecc@ya...
 > Subject: Re: [ecc] Can anyone help with testing tools?
 > Date: 30 Oct 2003 07:24:15 -0700
 > On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 05:50, sailor1357 wrote:
 > > Is there any tool available for testing ECC? Can we find a tool that 
 > > can emulate ECC hardware error? Just wrote something for chipset 
 > > e8870. I am wondering how testing is done for our existing chipsets.
 > 
 > There are a few good ways to check functionality.
 > 
 > 1) Gently apply heat to the DIMMs with a heat lamp or heat gun.
 > 
 > 2) Find some bad memory, label it, and hang on to it for testing
 > purposes.
 > 
 > 3) Stress the memory with something like Linpack (do this in conjunction
 > with the other methods).
 > 
 > 4) Cut a thin strip off a silver, anti-static component bag.(ps. adhesive
 > tape is also useful here.) Powerdown, pull up DIMM,insert it in the socket 
 > with the DIMM so that some of the pins don"t make contact. Then power on. 
 > It"s best to go to http://jedec.org and lookup the DIMM
 > specification to know which pins to mask.  I believe pins 12 and 13 are
 > data pins and are convenient to count to and mark.  Obviously you only
 > want to mask one pin if the machine only has SECDED capability.
 > 
 > Here"s some more information on how to do that:
 > 
 > +-------------------------------
 > |                               \
 > |                                -------+
 > |        Masking Strip                  |
 > |                                -------+
 > |                               /
 > +-------------------------------
 > 
 > The narrow part ends up being ~2-3mm wide, the wide part can be whatever
 > is convenient.  This way the strip is wide enough to hold on to and
 > maneuver, yet is narrow enough to mask pins.
 > 
 > Here"s an ugly representation of a DIMM:
 > 
 > +---------------------------------------+
 > |                                       |
 > |              DIMM Front               |
 > |                                       |
 > |                       +-+             |
 > |00000000000000000000000| |0000000000000|
 > +-----------------------+ +-------------+
 >  ^                                     ^
 >  |                                     |
 >  +-- Pin #1                  Pin #92 --+
 > 
 > Pin 12 is DQ8
 > Pin 13 is DQ9
 > 
 > I use these because it"s the first pair of adjacent pins.  If I"m trying
 > to mask one pin then it gives me some margin for error.  If I"m trying
 > to mask two pins then they are adjacent and it can be done with a single
 > strip.
 > 
 > The nice thing about this method is that you can instantly have a bad
 > DIMM and you can control where the bits are bad which can be verified
 > with the syndrome and row decoding.  The drawback is that it means that
 > there"s *always* an error and it isn"t very random.
 > 
 -- 
 Thayne Harbaugh