Breaking the 64MB barrier

B. James Phillippe (bryan@terran.org)
Thu, 15 Oct 1998 18:46:46 -0700 (PDT)


Greetings,

I am aware that passing the "mem=XX" option in LILO overcomes this
problem; this is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with what I'm
about to ask (for you rapid-reply "RTFM" people).

The question is this: I had a debate with someone about the 64MB+
memory issue with Linux. Their position is that it's a bug in the kernel,
and mine was that it was an x86 BIOS limitation. I have two questions:
1.) who's right? 2.) How is it that Microsoft is able to deal with this
without a bootloader option, and we can't? Seems this is a sizeable flaw
(regardless of the cause) for systems where the memory amount may be
changed dynamically. If this is indeed a kernel limitation, what would be
required to get past it?

thanks,
-bp

--
B. James Phillippe	. bryan@terran.org
UNIX Software Engineer	. http://www.terran.org/~bryan
Member since 1.1.59	. finger:bryan@earth.terran.org
MOTM: Waiting for the DSL to go in :)

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