This article originally appeared in TidBITS on 1999-11-08 at 12:00 p.m.
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Quiz Preview: PRAM Got Ya Down?

by Adam C. Engst

Quiz Preview: PRAM Got Ya Down? Let's take a brief break from polls this week and instead go for a quiz question that could help solve strange Mac problems. Every Mac stores a variety of important settings in something called "Parameter RAM" - PRAM for short. The contents of PRAM can become corrupted, causing no end of unusual behavior. For instance, our neighbors recently complained that their Performa 6400 wouldn't start up from the internal hard disk or from a CD-ROM. Booting from an external hard disk also failed, but I was finally able to get it to boot from floppy disk, after which I ran several disk utilities that reported no problems. Finally, I tried zapping the PRAM, which instantly restored the Mac to full working order. The question, then, is: how do you zap the PRAM? Since that many long-time Macintosh users will know the answer, there's bonus information on the quiz answer page, including a list of settings stored in PRAM. Visit our home page to test your knowledge or maybe even learn a little! [ACE]

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