Return to BSD News archive
Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:15652 comp.os.386bsd.development:2995 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!news.moneng.mei.com!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gumby!andrews-cc!gillham From: gillham@andrews.edu (Andrew Gillham) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: 32M RAM not recognized on Dell PC Date: 5 Jan 1995 21:41:15 GMT Organization: Andrews University Lines: 34 Message-ID: <3ehp1r$3v8@orion.cc.andrews.edu> References: <3eh7uc$6mr@malcolm.wdgarl.wes.mot.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: edmund.cs.andrews.edu Keywords: RAM, CMOS, Dell In article <3eh7uc$6mr@malcolm.wdgarl.wes.mot.com> pearce@malcolm.wdgarl.wes.mot.com (Mike Pearce) writes: > > >I have a Dell 466/ME (Phoenix BIOS) with 32M of RAM, which FreeBSD >recognizes as having only 16M of RAM. Investigation shows that FreeBSD >gets its idea of how much RAM is in the machine by reading the >extended memory entry from the RTC CMOS RAM. In my machine, this is >15296. On startup, the POST shows 32M, though, as does the BIOS setup >program. > >My other operating systems (Linux and Windows NT) take advantage of >all of my RAM, so they must be getting their information from >somewhere else (investigation into how Linux does it shows that the >real-mode boot loader queries BIOS for the information and passes it >into the kernel on startup). I have the same problem on a Dell 466SE w/32MB. I think the better solution would be to figure out how the BIOS is determining the amount of RAM, and use the same technique. Having the boot loader pass it in is ok too, though I would like the kernel to be able to figure it out for itself. >above 15360? How do other machines with more than 16M cope with this >(different BIOS?)? What can I do to fix this problem (short of the >above source-code modifications)? Hard-code the line in machdep.c to '1024 * 31', recompile it.. -Andrew -- ========================================================== Andrew Gillham gillham@andrews.edu LAN/WAN/Netware/Unix Analyst gillham@whirlpool.com ==========================================================