Problems with Mushkin RAM and the MacBook Pro

If you are think of upgrading the memory in your MacBook Pro to avoid the rather large Apple price tag, then I would steer clear of the Mushkin 1GB PC2-5300 SODIMM (Part 991504) as they appear to have an incompatibility with the MacBook Pro.

Immediately after installing the Mushkin SODIMM, the MacBook Pro began spontaneously restarting within a minute or so of starting up. I took the memory out and tested the laptop with just it’s standard 1GB and all was fine with no spontaneous restarts. So I reinstalled the memory hoping that it was just a bad seating, but the problem came back.

The odd thing is that if it doesn’t restart with two minutes or so, then it stays on without issue however this usually requires one or two reboots. Once it’s working OK, then I can put it to sleep and it’ll wake up fine, I can run it hard and it’ll run all night – but if I reboot then the problem reappears. I’ve run the Apple Hardware Tests in basic and extended mode repeatedly and it never reports an issue at all. There is nothing in the console logs when it does reboot, it just seems to power cycle.

I recently got a 1GB Crucial PC2-5300 SODIMM and that doesn’t have the problem at all. I ended up trying all the combinations of slots and memory types (the standard Apple SODIMM, the Mushkin SODIMM and the Crucial SODIMM) and if the Mushkin is installed in any slot, either on it’s own or with one of the other SODIMMs, then the problem reappears. The only explanation would seem to be an incompatibility between the Mushkin and the MacBook Pro…so I would suggest avoiding Mushkin for your MBP upgrades and go with Crucial.

Think Different

Well the experience of being a MacBook Pro owner has really brought back the excitement that computers used to have for me – now after using it for a few days I can confirm that it really is different.

It’s a luxury item to be sure – but when you open it up you know you are no longer in the world of the low margin PC box shifters. OS X is beautiful and elegant on it’s own, but with the addition of a few utilities like Desktop Manager and Quicksilver it simply shows you a world of productivity and ease that I never imagined…Apple can put me down as a switcher once I get used to the odd keyboard. If only Microsoft would build Visual Studio for the Mac and Valve would build Steam & CS:S I would be in seventh heaven.

Penny Arcade

I went looking to see if my faviourite web comic had updated and what do I see, Gabe and Tycho talking about the Mac and there was the quote any geek waiting waiting for his new computer wants to see:

It’s just really fucking good and that’s all.

And to top it all off, they had put up a new strip and that was also Mac related.

An Apple tommorrow keeps the boredom away.

The MacBook has landed at the office after its rather sluggish progression across the globe (<19MPH seems a little slow in this day an age...man have I been bored waiting!):

Now all the stands in the way of a geeky Mac love in, is for the ever vigilant Nicky to pop the thing into a couriers hands. So tommorrow I shall begin the process of having my high expectations dashed on the rocks of Revision A niggles and coding in the most square bracket heavy language I have seen…

Speaking of coding, after finishing Learning Cocoa with Objective-C (which I’ll now re-read with Mac in hand), I began reading Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X 2nd Edition which I have enjoyed so far. Hillegass’s book gives a good background on the OS X conventions from its NextStep origins and gives plenty of topics a brief but working introduction. I like working examples simply because it makes it easier to go and find the appropriate documentation if you’ve got class names, and it’s easier to experiment when you’ve got some working boiler plate code.

As an added bonus, the author’s picture on the back cover gave me a chuckle as now I know what the illegitamate child of Brokeback Mountain and The Three Musketeers would look like: