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I would like to know what type of memory I can use in my OCEAN HIPPO 12 VIP Socket 3 486 motherboard.
It currently has three 4MB modules, one of which is marked 'SAMSUNG KMM5321000C-7' which I cannot trace on the Samsung website to determine its type.
Try <a href="http://www.crucial.com/uk" target="_blank">crucial</a> just feed in your board name and it should tell you.
Failing that, take a memory module out, there are two main types in computers this old, 30-pin and 72-pin. If it's 72, you'll probably need Fast Page Mode (FPM) RAM, as opposed to EDO. Also check the contact material to see whether it's tin-lead or gold (you can tell by the colour) if you use a SIMM with the wrong sort of contact material it will corrode.
If there are 3 modules already on this board, they would have to be 72-pin. 30-pin modules had to be installed in sets of 4 on 486's. So now 72-pin Fast Page Mode is part of your answer. Next, you have to determine if you need 3.3volt or 5volt modules. Look for a jumper near the memory sockets labeled 3.3v/5v. See what you can learn from the previously posted link to crucial....
So far as I remember,most (if not all) FPM memory was 5V. As additional,I would like to say, what some (but far not all) of 486 motherboards supported even EDO memory. Especially with UMC and ALi chipsets.
I used to have an old PCChips 486 VESA UMC motherboard,what worked well with EDO memory - very handy,and EDO memory works faster.
If You can try EDO memory before actually buying it - do it...EDO memory much more easy to get...
One thing to watch out for on the HIPPO motherboards (Octek). They liked their pet system of "virtual" cache, either using a fast buffer chip on the motherboard, or distributed cache on the SIMMs.
If the board has no 2nd level cache chips, it will be a "virtual cache" model. If it uses the caching SIMMs, they were expensive, and I have no idea whether you could still source any. In this case, I think you could still use FP or maybe EDO, but there would be no 2nd level cache, so it would be slow.