Date: Mon, 06 Feb 1995 10:26:24 +0100 (MET) From: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> To: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com (user alias) Subject: Re: Bios basemem (637K) != RTC basemem (640K) Message-ID: <199502060926.KAA16197@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> In-Reply-To: <9502052155.AA03368@cs.weber.edu> from "Terry Lambert" at Feb 5, 95 02:55:09 pm
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> >[Bios basemem (637K) != RTC basemem (640K)] > > > > > Excuse my ignorance, but what does that mean? Do I have to worry? > > It means that either your BIOS starts counting at 0 and something swiped > 2k of memory, or your BIOS starts counting a 1 and someone swiped 3k of > memory. Or your BIOS starts counting at -2 and nothing is swiping any > memory at all. > > Personally, I have use an AT&T 6386 WGS system that reported 639k all > the time because it started counting at 0. > > I have also used an HP Vectra system that said 636k because it had > some wierd disk information that the BIOS put there. > > BSD sees something more than 512 but less than 640, then issues the > warning, not because the memory isn't there and usable, but because > it's going to assume you really have 640k, and it wants you to know that > it is making that assumption. > > Depending on your machine and BIOS, it's probably nothing worse than > the user configurable IDE drive table. > > One case is that your boot blocks are eating the memory for something; > typically, something like the OnTrack boot code that loads an INT 13 > redirector to go drive geometry translation for an EIDE drive. > > One of these is the most likely case. > > Absolute total worst case is a boot block virus. Since BSD doesn't use > BIOS for I/O, and the kernel isn't typically named a DOS name, this > isn't a problem unless you run DOS. > > You may want to pull down a virus chacker from wuarchive.wustl.edu, if > you are absolutely paranoid. 8-). I checked that, too, using SCAN 2,13e (McAfee)C and it looks clean. > I see this message only when booting the SNAP 950202 floppy. Booting the hard disk FreeBSD partition does not show the message (though I still have the old bootloader which looks for 386BSD in the disklabel - wondered why it did not go away, though, when I labelled the disk using the 2.x fdisk/disklabel menu). --Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de FreeBSD blues 2.1.0-Development FreeBSD 2.1.0-Development #0: Sat Feb 4 16:57:32 1995 kuku@blues:/usr/src/sys/compile/BLUES i386
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