I got a new PC, as every new PC preinstalled with Windows 98.
I used F8 at boot time to enter the boot menu, like I always did with my
old (Windows 95) PC. I then used dosboot to start NetBSD (root on nfs).

This always worked fine, but with this new PC (besides some problems in
-current dosboot.com that Matthias fixed) this won't work as expected:

If using "Command prompt only" to boot (i.e. with himem.sys loaded)
the "mem" command on DOS shows 256 MB memory (correct) and dosboot only
sees 64 MB of it (via XMS, getextmem1() returns 0).

If using "Confirm" and rejecting all (i.e. pure DOS without himem.sys
loaded) the DOS "mem" command shows 64 MB memory, and dosboot sees
all the 256 MB available (via getextmem1() - no XMS is found).

Since everything works as expected without himem.sys, I think the Windows 98
version of himmem.sys intercepts the BIOS calls we make to find the memory
and returns something they assume "save" - but wrong. Has anyone seen similar
behaviour on other Windows 98 machines? Any ideas how to work around it?

For now I'll use the tedious way to reject every single driver and boot without
XMS - which has the additional benefit that APM will work ;-)


Martin