On Tue, 6 Apr 1999, Michael L. Hitch wrote:

> On Tue, 6 Apr 1999, Tim Austwick wrote:
> 
> > Ive got a 5000/200, with netbsd 1.3.3 installed.
> > 
> > Memory slot 3 (the fourth one...), is buggered. A test-mem-m tells me
> > about some problem. With ram in this slot, NetBSD tends to fall over, with
> > ram problems.
> > 
> > I have 11*8meg memory cards. Giving me 88megs. Now, if i put 24megs in the
> > first three slots (0,1,2), and the rest in (4-12), the mem-test-m works
> > (because slot 3 isnt being used), and a cnfg reports 88 megs of memory.
> > 
> > But! When NetBSD boots, it finds 24megs of real memory. 
> 
>   NetBSD currently just scans for contiguous memory, and thus stops when
> it hits the empty slot and will ignore the rest.

Ah, i see... 

> 
> > Is there some way to force it to use the full 88?
> > 
> > I was thinking along the lines:
> > boot 5/rz0/netbsd memory=88M
> > or something.
> > 
> > Does anyone know how to do this? Or where i can find out?
> 
>   There isn't any way to do this at this time.
> 
>   I can provide you with some test patches I've been running with that
> will attempt to detect and size each memory slot individually.  These
> patches allow me to mix memory module sizes in a 5000/200 and 5000/260 and
> should be able to handle dis-contiguous memory configurations.  [These
> patches are for 1.4/-current and could be hard to add to 1.3.x.]

That's be great! Im quite new to the whole NetBSD thang (all my intel
boxes have linux installed...)

So if netbsd only detects contiguous memory could i put an 8 meg card in
the duff slot, then tell NetBSD to *exculde* a reange of memory? That way,
i can get 80 megs in use (by just excluding the 8 megs in slot 3). I lose
ram that way, but at the same time gain ram from what i have now!!!

Is that possible? Would it involve something more than a boot flag? (If so
where can i find info on it... again, im quite new to netbsd!).

Thanks for your help!

Tim Austwick