In message <"irafs2.ira.227:26.10.95.13.46.25"@ira.uka.de>, Guenther Grau 
spake so:

-> AFAIK, NetBSD had a bug which limited the mem it could deal with to 64 MB.
-> I don't know if this bug has ben fixed though, and I am not sure if this
-> applies to port-i386. Anyone? 
-> Anyways, please provide more information about the system you are using
-> (I don't have a DELL :-). Which bootfloppies are you using? 
-> 
-> > presumably this is a bios problem but it'd be nice to find a way around it
-> 
-> I don't think it's a BIOS problem, see above. To make sure it isn't,
-> try booting any other OS and see how much of the available mem it sees.

	It's not a BIOS problem, it it however, a CMOS RAM problem... I
	have a Dell OmpiPlex 590 with 1.1ALPHA on it and 32Meg ram.  The
	bootblocks (which use the BIOS) tell me I have 640/31400 (or close
	to that) for base/extended memory... However, the CMOS RAM says 
	that I have 15Meg exended, and hence the NetBSD *kernel* only
	believes I have 16Meg.

	I send a patch (port-i386/1319) that you can apply to machdep.c
	that allows you to hard-code the amount of extended memory you
	have (via an option in your config file)... However, I don't know
	if the 64Meg limit described above holds, so you may have other
	problems.

	As for other OSes, I know BSDi does some trick (maybe they make
	a BIOS call??) to circumvent the "Dell lying about memory size"
	bug, so testing them isn't necessarily tell you what is it that
	is broken in any precise way (it just tells you that there is a
	way to get the info...)

							--rafal

----
Rafal Boni					     rafal@scofflaw.banyan.com
Engineer, Data Management		   		  Banyan Systems, Inc.
(All opinions are my own)		   120 Flanders Rd, Westboro, MA 01581