[rescue] Mobo won't post with new (old) ram stick

[microcode at zoho.com]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 04:24:20PM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Just throwing this out there, but have you considered dust/corrosion on the
> second memory slot on the former 2G machine?

Thank you, it's a good suggestion and I did look at that. The cases are all
fairly dusty because I was living in a high dust environment and I didn't
have canned air so I vacuumed the cases as much as I could without getting
close to the mobos (all the exterior vents, fan shrouds etc.) and then blew
out as much as I could with human power (face-full of dust and hacking
cough) but the slot looks really clean and no sign of corrosion. I can't
test the theory because the mobo is not supposed to post with only one stick
in the 2nd slot. But, swapping the sticks around (only 2 slots, not that
hard to do) and also running with only one stick, it's certain one of these
sticks is not getting any love from the mobo. I wrapped it in a antistatic
package and I'll eventually either take it back to the shop that built the
box or send it back to Mushkin (lifetime guarantee). In the meantime I'll
try to pick up one additional stick. 

Thanks to everyone for the help.

> I've been working with a lot of older machines at work recently, and I've been
> using canned air to clean out all sockets before I add more RAM to system that
> have had empty memory slots for years. It has cut down considerably on my
> issues after adding more RAM.

I wish I could have that on hand, but a can of air here costs as much as a
stick of RAM where you guys live ;-)