[sllug-members]: install linux lose ram

[Fisher, Travis G]

_______________________________________
From: sllug-members-bounces at sllug.org [mailto:sllug-members-bounces at sllug.org] On Behalf Of Don Flemming
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 10:18 AM
To: sllug-members at sllug.org
Subject: [sllug-members]: install linux lose ram

>Hi
>I'm new to Salt Lake city and I thought maybe you could help me with a >problem. I first installed suse 6.2 back in 1999. I had put together >computer with a K6-166 a few months earlier and had just upgraded the ram >to 64mb ( 2x32md dimms). After about three days I noticed my RAM was >reading about 16mb low. I tried touboleshooting it but could not find the >problem. I even did a low level format and reinstalled the s/w. It didn't >work. I did another low level format and reinstalled windows. nothing fixed >it. I next bought a used laptop, an IBM thinkpad 380d. I tried installing >suse 6.2 and it did the same thing . it ate 16mb of the ram. Last year I >got a copy of mandrake Linux 10.0 nstalled it on a k6-366 computer I had >put together from spare parts. It did the same thing. It ate my ram. When I >tried installing it on the first computer, the k6-166 it ate a second 16mb >of ram
>I have now tried two different iterations of linux on threeseperate and >distinct hardware platforms and each time I lose 16mb of RAM. This shows up >in the bios and further troubleshooting indicates that the change is in the >DIMMs. If figure to s/w is setting something in the DIMM controller but I >don't know what.
>Does anybody know what's going on here? Why does linux change my RAM and >how do I fix it?
>Thanks, Don AKA dcflemming at yahoo.com
  


Are you sure it's not the onboard video settings in the BIOS that are using the 16MB of RAM? We've got plenty of computers here with 512MB that only show up with 480MB because of shared memory being used for the onboard video card.