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Date:      Fri, 13 Apr 2001 09:32:02 -0700
From:      "Kevin G. Eliuk" <kg@dccnet.com>
To:        "Jonathan M. Slivko" <optix@nyc.rr.com>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org, newbies@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Why is my machine only using 64MB of RAM?
Message-ID:  <3AD72A02.3D6CD329@dccnet.com>
References:  <008501c0c436$adea85c0$01000001@darkstar>

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> "Jonathan M. Slivko" wrote:
 
> Hello all,
> 
> I have a Dell Dimension XPS T500 which I had installed FreeBSD
> 4.2-RELEASE on (from the ISO) and on system bootup, dmesg reports
> that there is only 65MB of RAM available to the system. However, this
> is not the case. This machine has 2 sticks, each of 128MB of RAM for
> a total of 256MB. However, when the machine is in Windows, all 256MB
> of RAM is detected and used and everything is working fine. I have
> since deinstalled FreeBSD from my system and am now currently running
> Windows, trying to figure all of this out. Any insight would be
> appreciated, as I want to get back to using FreeBSD as soon as
> possible.

It is explained in /sys/i386/conf/LINT as this <4.3-RC FreeBSD>.
< snip >
# MAXMEM specifies the amount of RAM on the machine; if this is not
# specified, FreeBSD will first read the amount of memory from the CMOS
# RAM, so the amount of memory will initially be limited to 64MB or 16MB
# depending on the BIOS.  If the BIOS reports 64MB, a memory probe will
# then attempt to detect the installed amount of RAM.  If this probe
# fails to detect >64MB RAM you will have to use the MAXMEM option.
# The amount is in kilobytes, so for a machine with 128MB of RAM, it would
# be 131072 (128 * 1024).
< snip >
options         MAXMEM="(128*1024)"
< snip >

So compile your kernel, including the amount of memory that you have installed
and it will use the entire amount of installed RAM.


-- 
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                               | intellectual property of the author and
Kevin G. Eliuk <kg@dccnet.com> | are therefore governed by the copyright
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