Abstract
Mixing Metals Can Lead to Computer Crashes
Over the past couple of years, the makers of motherboards and memory upgrades started standardizing on tin plating for memory connectors instead of the traditional gold connectors, for reasons of cost. According to a news item by Deborah DeVoe, Tom Quinlan, and contributor Luc Hatlestad in a recent issue of Infoworld (June 10, 1996), this mixing of metals—putting gold-plated RAM into tin-plated slots—leads to degalvanization which causes the components to decay and crumble, potentially resulting in fatal data errors.
The danger can occur if users move existing gold-plated SIMMs into new tin-plated systems or if they upgrade older systems with tin-plated motherboards. The speed of the corrosion is affected by factors including the quality of the components and environmental conditions, but reportedly can start in as few as three weeks and can cause problems within six months.
There remains debate over the seriousness of the problem—some IS managers argue that potential corrosion would take years rather than months, so long that by the time it happened, the system would be obsolete, others noting that they had to replace mismatched memory when it started failing after less than a year. Most motherboards are now tin-based, leaving customers with few gold-plated upgrade options. Some vendors noted that users might not add the older gold-plated memory to newer systems because it may be slower. Products are now being designed to coat memory in order to avoid corrosion, allowing users to mix and match different memory components.