memory parameters at booting ? (problem)

Alexandre Molari (molari@iprolink.ch)
Thu, 14 Mar 1996 22:56:52 +0100 (GMT+0100)

hello,
I've got a 386sx with 4mb ram and I would like to use it as a 2nd computer
connected to my main one with plip. The problem is that my ram chip have a
problem. At a certain address (an unique one) the memory test fails. Therefore
when I boot the computer my old shitty bios use only my first 2 megs :(
(the strange thing is that it works well - except the particular memory
address error - the first time I've booted with these ram configuration).
I suppose linux uses the information of the bios and therefore it uses only
2 megs of ram (then again, the first time I booted my computer with these
ram chips it worked fine: 4 megs available). Now here are the questions
1) Is it possible to force linux at boot time to use all my memory (4 megs)
and therefore linux shouldn't 'listen' to the bios about it.
2) Can I specify the unique address linux should exclude (not use) because
it's a buggy memory byte in the memory ? Maybe it does that automagically ?

Thanks very much for any help (linux work _much_ faster with 4mb ram than with
2mb, above all on an old 386sx ;-)

-- 
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 Alexandre Molari  ***  Geneva, Switzerland
 molari@iprolink.ch
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