4GB memory

Wed Apr 2 16:03:39 UTC 2008

On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 11:04:52AM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
> It occurs to me that I haven't booted Vista since I let Debian/GRUB
> mess with the MBR ...  I should probably do that.  But Dell does seem
> to have provided Recovery disks.

Yes Dell seems to have decided to include real DVDs for Vista.

> SP1 has received such extraordinarily bad reviews that I think I'll
> wait: I'm not using Vista much (I haven't booted it since I installed
> Debian three or four days ago) so I'll let others work out the kinks
> on that one.

My wife is quite happy with SP1 on her machine.  No problems at all.
Some things do seem to work faster for file transfers and such now.
Wifi seems more reliable too.

> >   BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
> >   BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
> >   BIOS-e820: 00000000000e7000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
> >   BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000003ffc0000 (usable)
> >   BIOS-e820: 000000003ffc0000 - 000000003ffd0000 (ACPI data)
> >   BIOS-e820: 000000003ffd0000 - 0000000040000000 (ACPI NVS)
> >   BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
> >   BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
> >   BIOS-e820: 00000000ff7c0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
> 
> That's ... nice, unfortunately I can't read it at all.  You'll see
> below that my listing is very similar.  Anyone who can read it feel
> free to comment ...

It's a list of start and end addresses and what their type is.  A
machine with 4GB ram should have some memory starting at 4GB so
something like:

  BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 0000000037142000 (usable)

So starting at 4GB to somewhere at 4.8GB should be usable ram.  My
number is just a random guess at what an address for .8GB might be.

> This may fall into the dumb question category ... but I should ask:
> the c2d and c2q processors are 64 bit, right?  Aside from known issues
> like 32 bit Flash, is there any reason I shouldn't install 64 bit
> Debian?

Yes they are 64.  I can't think of a reason not to go 64bit these days.

> Here's a part of "dmesg" output:
> 
> BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009e800 (usable)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 000000000009e800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000cf590000 (usable)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 00000000cf590000 - 00000000cf5e3000 (ACPI NVS)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 00000000cf5e3000 - 00000000cf5f0000 (ACPI data)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 00000000cf5f0000 - 00000000cf600000 (reserved)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 00000000e0000000 - 00000000f0000000 (reserved)
> 
>  BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

You do NOT have an ram starting at the 4GB mark, so nothing was
remapped, and hence the ram hidden behind the PCI and BIOS areas is
unusable.  If the BIOS remapped it then it would appear starting at the
4GB mark.

So your problem is the BIOS or possibly the chipset, but most likely
just the BIOS.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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