From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 31 18:12:21 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id SAA06390 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 18:12:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id SAA06382 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 18:12:17 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id TAA11652; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 19:09:03 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199602010209.TAA11652@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Compaq 16MB limit... To: m_tanaka@pa.yokogawa.co.jp (Mihoko Tanaka) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 19:09:02 +73700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, jerry@border.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <9602010134.AA10287@cabbage.pa.yokogawa.co.jp> from "Mihoko Tanaka" at Feb 1, 96 10:34:49 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >>There is no documented API to return the amount of RAM in a machine > >>other than CMOS. There is no BIOS routine that can be used by the > >>boot blocks to overcome this limit, nor does the POST place the results > >>of its test or expose a ROM routine for sizing memory. > > I asked a engineer of COMPAQ about it last month. > He said that we can use the following BIOS call for getting the > amount of RAM in a machine. [ ... Compaq BIOS call that probably won't work in protected mode ... ] > BSD/OS fixes it by testing for memory (starting at 2MB, and > continuing at most to 2GB) in the boot program, or by allowing you > to use a configuration file. We used to test for memory too. It made some computers reboot when you accessed bad pysical memory locations. Notably, Compaq. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.