Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT lycos.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>

> So that is why it panicked just after checking memory and finding 
> 252MB of the 256 it expected.  Do you happen to know why when the 
> BIOS was set to use 4MB for video RAM it had 252MB left, but when 
> it was set to use 2MB it had 256MB left? Some bug in the BIOS?

Perhaps at 2MB the motherboard can use some other memory source, but
at 4MB it's too slow and has to switch to RAM? Maybe something else is
enabled at 2MB which affects Linux's memory detection? I have no solid
answer. The motherboard may not actually allocate 4MB if it's enabled,
but 2MB may need to be allocated for a basic console.

> It was also set not to even use the onboard video but to use the PCI 
> card we added.

But it still tried to take some memory? Nasty.

> And why did ramdisk linux work - because the video RAM came from 
> near the end and BL2 ramdisk uses the first 12MB?

Perhaps when the bootloader set up the ramdisk, it did something to
the memory. I'm not really sure.

Have you found anyone else who has this problem? I would do a search
for it. Someone else may have figured out what is going on in the
motherboard.

David
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