3gb of RAM only showing as 2gb of RAM

[Wedgie]

I was recently inspired to buy some more RAM for my own PC, stopped and picked up 2gb for $45 on the way home, installed it, booted up the PC but it only shows as 2gb.
Hmm, I think, maybe its an issue with XP, googled the issue, found there was occasionally an issue, followed the answers but the same.
And also when I look at the BIOS, 2gb stick shows in one slot and the other shot shows as not installed.
So I think to myself, maybe Ive damaged the slot, as it is tricky to get to in my pc.
Swap them around, same result, 2gb showing.
I then think to myself, maybe Ive damaged the 1gb stick, so I take it out and install the 512mb stick that was previously in it, sure enough 2gb only shows again. Swap 'em around, same result.
Maybe there's an issue with 2 sticks I think to myself, so I take the 2gb out and put the 1gb and 512mb sticks back, sure enough 1.5 gb shows as it should.

So anyway, Ive now got half a gib more than I had before but I should be running at 3gb, the slots are OK, the sticks of RAM are fine, Ive reconfigured boot.ini to accept 3gb.
No go.

My only thought left is that the motherboard doesn't support more than 2gb.

Any other ideas?

[Wedgie]

Disregard, found the specs for my motherboard online and my guess was correct, it only supporters 2gb.

[firstblood]

We have come a long way in the last 10 - 15 years Wedgie. I can remember spending $300 back in the mid 90's to upgrade my pc from 4MB to 8 MB (yes that's MB'S) so i could play the early versions of Doom...

[Wedgie]

Yeah, unfortunately I checked my laptop and was going to put more RAM in that as the kids and wife use it and it only has 512mb of RAM, and it has DDR which is still ridiculously expenseive compared to DDR, I'd like to throw 2gb in it but that would set me back over $200 so I might as well as put that money away towards a new one anyway.

[JK]

We have come a long way in the last 10 - 15 years Wedgie. I can remember spending $300 back in the mid 90's to upgrade my pc from 4MB to 8 MB (yes that's MB'S) so i could play the early versions of Doom...

I can remember selling 20mb and 40mb Hard Drives back in about 1990 without a customer seeing much change from $1k

When my old man first started selling systems, they sold for about $11k and you made around $4-5k margin ... Pretty sure those units had 5Mb HDD's lol

[Psyber]

We have come a long way in the last 10 - 15 years Wedgie. I can remember spending $300 back in the mid 90's to upgrade my pc from 4MB to 8 MB (yes that's MB'S) so i could play the early versions of Doom...

I can remember selling 20mb and 40mb Hard Drives back in about 1990 without a customer seeing much change from $1k
When my old man first started selling systems, they sold for about $11k and you made around $4-5k margin ... Pretty sure those units had 5Mb HDD's lol

I remember getting a quote for just a computer and printer in 1984 - $14K was a lot of money then so I gave it a miss.
In 1987 I did it for $2700, with an Aquarius XT Turbo with 640K of RAM and an Epson 9 pin dot matrix.
In 1988 I upgraded its 10MB HDD to a 20MB one for $200 - sounds like that was a good deal then.
The guy I had bought through and I became friends too, and went he went off to the US for a while in the early 1990s he introduced me around, and showed me the ropes for setting up my own dealership.
He was a somewhat notorious character in the trade in Adelaide.