From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Dec 14 18:25:23 1996 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id SAA13627 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 14 Dec 1996 18:25:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from bugs.us.dell.com (bugs.us.dell.com [143.166.169.147]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id SAA13621 for ; Sat, 14 Dec 1996 18:25:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from moth.us.dell.com (moth.us.dell.com [143.166.169.152]) by bugs.us.dell.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id UAA11369; Sat, 14 Dec 1996 20:24:45 -0600 Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19961214202436.0067ea7c@bugs.us.dell.com> X-Sender: tony@bugs.us.dell.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 beta 4 (32) Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 20:24:46 -0600 To: Eivind Eklund , hackers@freebsd.org From: Tony Overfield Subject: MAXMEM was: Re: 2.1.6 on Compaq Prosignia 500 (2.1.5 worked) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk At 07:32 PM 12/12/96 +0100, Eivind Eklund wrote: >>options "MAXMEM=65536" # 64 MB memory >due to Compaq (and Dell) using an extremely irritating aspect of the EISA >standard, and saying that they have 16MB in RTC-memory. I think you're irritated about the wrong thing. The RTC-memory cannot (in any standardized way) indicate more than ~65MB of system memory. This means that bypassing the BIOS and groping around in the RTC-memory is a dead-end solution. There are standardized BIOS calls to obtain the correct amount of memory, even when it exceeds 65 MB. I think the boot loader should make these BIOS calls and pass the correct information to the kernel. Tony - my personal opinion only