When I was first building my Mame upright, in the early months of 2003, I needed some RAM chips for the PC I was building.
Demon-Seed had advertised two 256M RAM chips, among other parts. We made a deal, I believe it was $60 for both chips. This was around the going price for two 256M chips at the time.
The chips arrived, all the way from Canada, in nothing but a small padded bag. Immediately I was concerned about whether or not they had been damaged. I was also concerned that this might have just been an attempt to sell already damaged goods.
Sure enough, only one of the RAM chips works. The other one gives a RAM error when the PC is booting. I have tried it in other machines, with the same problem. It is not a compatibility problem - the chip is bad.
Demon-Seed seemingly disappeared from this forum for over a year, just after this sale. I send him a message on here but it went unanswered. After the year passed, I noticed him posting again. I told him about the RAM situation. He suggested that the chips may have gone bad or they were incompatible. I assured him it wasn't a compatibility problem, because I tried the chips in other machines with the same results. That was the last communication.
I just thought I'd let others know about this, as a warning about poor packaging, if nothing else. I suppose it was a relatively cheap lesson for me.
Wade