From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Apr 23 14:38:01 1997
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To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Can't put 512MB ram in box ... Extended memory question. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 23 Apr 1997 11:20:39 PDT."
             <199704231820.LAA29412@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
From: David Greenman <dg@root.com>
Reply-To: dg@root.com
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 14:38:53 -0700
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>> Is it my imagination or doesnt BSDI handle this fairly automagically?
>
>Yeah.  The use the standard BIOS calls to get the size, then they
>don't override it with CMOS size later on like FreeBSD does.
>
>> Also what are the consequences of setting MAXMEM to a high number
>> even on low memory machine. 
>
>Depends on the machine.  It won't be good when the kernel tries to
>allocate pages in non-existant chips, no matter what.  Many machines
>mirror; some just reboot.

   If the address space wraps ("mirror the pages") you'll know soon enough
when the memory total comes out (assuming the memory test hasn't killed your
system first by clobbering something important).

-DG

David Greenman
Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project