Need help for a Socket 478 retro system, probably RAM related

[Curtaku]

I got an old PC last week. It had an AOpen Socket 478 Mainboard, an Intel Celeron SL6RV and one stick of 512mb PC2100u.

 

I started the system and it wouldn't post (I tested onboard GPU and 2 AGP Cards), so I bought a new mainbaord because the AOpen one looked really bad to me (Chipset Cooler was ripped off the Chipset and some caps were bulging)

The new boad is an MSI 651M-L MS-7005. I put it all together with the old CPU and RAM and it still would not post, not even beep error codes.

So I bought new RAM (also PC2100u) but still the same issue. Then I had the Idea to test it without any RAM in the system and it gave me an error beep.

Now my suspicion is that the RAM is too slow for the PC to post corrrectly. I also looked at the MSI manuel and the supported speeds are 200/266/333MHz, so no 133MHz support. (Probably should have done that earlier)

 

This was my first time working with HW that old and I totaly forgot to check that stuff. Also the CPU has a 400MHz FSB and I got kinda confused my all these FSB/RAM calculations.

So my question would be what speed of RAM would I need to get to finally start the system? Would any of the speeds listed in the manuel be fine? I know there are some ratios you could set on some mainboards but like I said I am really confused right now and don't want to spend any more money unnecessarily.

 

The System right now:

MSI 651M-L MS-7005

512MB PC2100u Infineon DDR RAM (HYS64D64020GU-7-B)

Intel Celeron SL6RV @ 2GHz

Nvidia Geforce2 MX 400

 

Thanks for all your help in advance.

[Ashleyyyy]

theoretically that shouldn't matter, but you never know with stuff this vintage. i have a system much older than yours, with a first gen pentium and currently 16mb of ram, it too is extremely picky with ram. 

 

the easiest option is going to a thrift store that has ancient computer stuff on the shelves, i have one local to me. that way you can find the correct ram very cheap... 

[Curtaku]

Ok, I finally have it working! The problem was the CPU, probably cooked from the old, bad mainboard. Even the PC2100 DDR RAM works now, but I switched to PC2700 DDR RAM since I already bought it for testing.

[Beerzerker]

You may at some point want to look into PC3200 sticks, that's the most recent standard for DDR sticks and the fact your chip is a 200/400 chip.
It will perform best with PC3200 sticks in it because of that.
It's also commonly found with ease and cheap too so getting a set shoudn't be a problem.