Real and available memory?

[Julian Stacey]

Reference:
> From:		Krassimir Slavchev <krassi at bulinfo.net> 
> Date:		Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:46:33 +0300 
> Message-id:	<44D9A0E9.30608 at bulinfo.net> 

Krassimir Slavchev wrote:
> Julian H. Stacey wrote:
> > Krassimir Slavchev wrote:
> >   
> >> Julian H. Stacey wrote:
> >>     
> >>> Krassimir Slavchev wrote:
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>>
> >>>> I have Vortex86-6082 with 128Mb AMI bios.
> >>>>
> >>>> Why the kernel reports only 80 MB available memory?
> >>>> Is this related to BIOS or kernel settings?
> >>>>
> >>>> dmesg output:
> >>>>
> >>>> Copyright (c) 1992-2006 The FreeBSD Project.
> >>>> Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
> >>>>         The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
> >>>> FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE #0: Wed Jul 26 10:09:06 EEST 2006
> >>>>     root at krassi:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/TINYBSD
> >>>> Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
> >>>> CPU: Pentium (166.61-MHz 586-class CPU)
> >>>>   Origin = "SiS SiS SiS "  Id = 0x505
> >>>> real memory  = 125829120 (120 MB)
> >>>> avail memory = 84332544 (80 MB)
> >>>> kbd1 at kbdmux0
> >>>> ...
> >>>>     
> >>>>         
> >>> Does the mboard BIOS on monitor at boot recognise all 128 M ? 
> >>>
> >>> I've seen boards that only recognised 1/4 of the SIM size.
> >>> 80 seems a bit of an odd (non hex) number though.
> >>>
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >> Yes, at boot the board recognizes 128Mb. The RAM is embedded on the board.
> >> The kernel reports real 120 Mb because maybe 8 Mb is used by video card.
> >> I don't know why exact 80Mb is reported but 80 = 64+16.
> >>     
> >
> > Have you tried unplugging every board (inc. ethernet scsi raid etc)
> > & plugging in a different (modest, old as possible. less demanding)
> > graphic card ? Maybe that'd give a clue, maybe your graphics card
> > is taking more than 8M ?
> >
> >   
> No, I can't unplug anything, see: 
> http://www.icop.com.tw/products_detail.asp?ProductID=119

Interesting little board, (might be of interest to other freebsd.org
mail lists eg small, real time ).

That URL specifies
	128MB SDRAM
	...
	AGP Rev.2.0 compliant
	Shared system memory up to 64MB (Default 8 MB)
Maybe BIOS is no longer defaulting to 8 Meg ?
Checkable / Settable in BIOS ?

-- 
Julian Stacey.   Unix & C Consultant, Munich / Muenchen   http://berklix.com
Mail in Ascii, not HTML.	Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz.