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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Should I avoid Dell boxes?
Date: 3 Aug 1995 05:58:54 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <3vpoiu$bu4@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <JUN.95Jul24181630@fox.fax.iwa.fujixerox.co.jp>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com
jun@fox.fax.iwa.fujixerox.co.jp (Junichi Kurokawa) wrote:
]
] I heard several times in the past that Dell boxes have some non-standard
] (read bad) circuitry that's incapable of telling the operating system
] how much memory it really has, and FreeBSD suffers from this.
]
] My question is, do =all= Dell boxes have this deficiency, or some-do and
] some-don't? Thanks in advance for your comments.
Dell has interpreted the CMOS contents rather liberally, and so
has Compaq.
The CMOS will not store a memory size > 64M. On a Dell or a
Compaq, this is reduced to 32M.
UnixWare has a file called /stand/boot that you can "fix" this in.
In FreeBSD, you need to build a kernel after booting with your
32M of memory recognized. The option is documented in LINT.
Be aware that if you remove memory later, the kernel will crash,
so keep a copy of the initial kernel (I suggest /kernel.CMOS).
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.