New memory old mac

Question

I just recently updated to Leopard which completely jammed my eMac full. It had two 512 sticks of memory, I replaced one of them with a 1G. It is functioning properly but and recognizes the new 1G but only shows the other stick as 256 instead of 512. Do I need to add another 1G so they are the same? And it is still saying my startup disk is almost full. Is there anything I can do?

Answer 1

rc_wtts,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
The startup disk out of memory message has nothing to do with the amount of RAM; it refers to free space on the boot hard drive. If a Unix-based computer, which includes OS X, runs out of spce on the hard drive for the OS to store it's cache and log files, the OS can fail, and be unable to even boot normally.
You do not want to have to boot a Unix computer into single-user mode and use the command line to find and remove enough files to enable the computer to run normally. The absolute minimum of free hard drive space required depends on a number of factors, including how much RAM the computer has (that determines the maximum size of swap files), how many programs you have open at any one time, whether the programs you use have their own cache or scratch files (disc burning requires at least as much free space on the hard drive for scratch files as the size of the disc being burned; Photoshop and other imaging programs make heavy use of scratch files), and so on.
As a rule of thumb, you want to keep at least 5 GB free space on the hard drive (that allows for an Archive and Install if it should ever be necessary). If you find your hard drive is filling up past about 85% to 90% in use (10% to 15% free space), take that as a warning sign to either clear out unneeded files, acquire an external Firewire hard drive for additional storage, or replace the internal HD with a larger one.
To free up space on the hard drive, start with the larger sort of files first. You can delete unneeded movies, delete those installer .dmg disk images which can be readily downloaded anew, delete unused programs, and anything else you can positively identify as being expendable. Don't delete anything you're not sure of, especially not anything in the System or Library folders at the root level of the hard drive! Don't try to make backups onto DVD-R or even CD-R first if space is short, since the disc burning scratch image file could trigger the very problem you're working to prevent. Copying to a USB thumb drive should be safe.
As for the RAM question, after addressing the shortage of hard drive space, try swapping DIMMs and slots to determine if there's a problem with the physical DIMMs or the physical slots.