Redux: Getting >16MB on Compaqs

Bhaskar Manda (bhaskar@or4.me.uiuc.edu)
Sun, 1 Dec 1996 14:33:22 -0600


bpaj@gytha.demon.co.uk wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Michel LESPINASSE wrote:
>> On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Jari Soderholm wrote:
>>> > Machine has 32 meg RAM but poor Linux for some reason
>> > thinks that there is only 16 MB.
>> This is a known problem, some bioses never report more than 16M of
>>memory.
>> They do this to be compatible with some poorly written 80286 programs
>:-/
>> There is two short-term solutions :
>> * add a line in your /etc/lilo.conf, that states :
>> append="mem=32M"
>> * or, get ftp://studio.via.ecp.fr/pub/linux-16M-problem.patch
>Third short term solution:
>Some compaq bios's have an option to tell the real amount of memory
>present, and if not, you can get a utility from compaq if you can't do
>this.

I have tried the first two solutions, linux still crashes. I have 20MB
on a Compaq LTE Lite 4/25E. Normally Linux sees 16256k, when I use the
patch mentioned above, Linux sees 16384k, but crashes. I don't know if
it's a memory hole problem because the person who suggested that said
that the hole is below 16MB, and linux can see and use upto 16MB without
problems.

I was wondering if anyone had any other things to try, or if the memory
detection is going to change to something like that which DOS uses, or if
anyone has gotten the utility that makes the BIOS report the entire memory
(my BIOS setup doesn't have an option to set this up).

Thanks,
-bhaskar