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GRUB2 is able to supply this same information to an unpatched kernel, making the BadRAM patch unnecessary.
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Starting from MemTest86 2.3 and Memtest86+ 1.60, the program can output a list of bad RAM regions in the format expected by the BadRAM patch for the Linux kernel. Both versions now support current multi-core processors and the corresponding chipsets. The program is compiled as position-independent code so as to be able to move itself around and test all the memory regions. The bootloading code was originally derived from Linux 1.2.1. The source code of MemTest86 (BIOS version) and of the MemTest86+ fork is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). MemTest86 is written in C and x86 assembly. As of February 2023 the latest version of Memtest86+ is 6.10. After MemTest86 remained at version 3.0 (2002 release) for two years, Samuel Demeulemeester created the Memtest86+ fork to add support for newer CPUs and chipsets. MemTest86 was developed by Chris Brady in 1994. Each tries to verify that the RAM will accept and correctly retain arbitrary patterns of data written to it, that there are no errors where different bits of memory interact, and that there are no conflicts between memory addresses. MemTest86 and Memtest86+ are memory test software programs designed to test and stress test an x86 architecture computer's random-access memory (RAM) for errors, by writing test patterns to most memory addresses, reading back the data, and comparing for errors.
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