Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 00:15:41 -0800 From: Marc Wandschneider <MarcW@Lanfear.com> To: 'Zachary Drew' <drew0054@tc.umn.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: freebsd 3.3 not picking up more than 16mb RAM Message-ID: <13D5F9EDFD72D211BC3100105A1C2233054A52@AKIRA>
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From the FAQ, http://www.freebsd.org/FAQ/troubleshoot.html#REALLYBIGRAM [see ****, added by me] ---------------------------------- Q: I have 128 MB of RAM but the system only uses 64 MB. A: Due to the manner in which FreeBSD gets the memory size from the BIOS, it can only detect 16 bits worth of Kbytes in size (65535 Kbytes = 64MB) (************ or less... some BIOSes peg the memory size to 16M ***********). If you have more than 64MB, FreeBSD will attempt to detect it; however, the attempt may fail. To work around this problem, you need to use the kernel option specified below. There is a way to get complete memory information from the BIOS, but we don't have room in the bootblocks to do it. Someday when lack of room in the bootblocks is fixed, we'll use the extended BIOS functions to get the full memory information...but for now we're stuck with the kernel option. options "MAXMEM=<n>" Where n is your memory in Kilobytes. For a 128 MB machine, you'd want to use 131072. ---------------------------------- marc. > -----Original Message----- > From: Zachary Drew [mailto:drew0054@tc.umn.edu] > Sent: Tue, November 23, 1999 12:08 AM > To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: freebsd 3.3 not picking up more than 16mb RAM > > > > I have a pentium pro 200 /w 96MB RAM. > > the bios and windos both see the 96MB of RAM just fine. > > freebsd however, is only seeing 16MB of that ram. > > from top: > Mem: 2808K Active, 3984K Inact, 3656K Wired, 2060K Cache, > 1318K Buf, 580K Free > > This is a fresh install of 3.3 with no special circumstances. > > Thanks, > Zach > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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