Memtest 4.2 review

This small command-line utility thoroughly checks available memory under OS X.

License: Comercialware OS: Mac OS X File size: 2K Developer: Frisky's Software Buy Now Price: $1.00 Updated: 23 Oct 2006

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This small command-line utility thoroughly checks available memory under OS X. Memtest is licensed under the Gnu Public License and is distributed with source code. This program was originally authored by Charles Cazabon for Linux platforms. The MacOS X port is maintained and enhanced by Tony Scaminaci.

Memtest is distributed as a universal (fat) binary containing four separate executables, targeting each of the major classes of available Macs. The appropriate machine-specific executable is loaded by OS X at launch time.

PPC G5 and Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro systems running MacOS 10.4 or higher will automatically run Memtest in 64-bit mode, allowing virtually any amount of installed ram to be tested. All other systems will run Memtest in 32-bit mode with a maximum testable limit of 4 GB. At this time, MacOS X limits the testable memory to 2 GB when running in 32-bit mode.

NOTE from the author: There is a small fee for downloading memtest from this site. The fee is set at $1.39 for version 4.2 and is being used to offset the costs of providing and maintaining this site. Please note that version 4.14 is still available for a download fee of $0.99. Both versions support MacOS X releases 10.2.8 and later. Please do not download memtest if you are running an earlier version of MacOS.

What's New:
Addition of a new Linear PRN test which fills the entire test space with non-repeating pseudorandom data. This test could help identify latent failures earlier in the testing process.
Addition of an intelligent command-line parser to reduce dependence on the order of command-line arguments. This will assist new users of unix-style command line programs and hopefully reduce inadvertant errors.
Each memtest run now reports the total execution time. If a user wishes to determine how long it will take to run a number of passes on a given system, run one pass and use that number to estimate the run time of mulitple passes.