re: too much RAM issue

[Jeff Davies <jeff@llandre.freeserve.co.uk>]

I have a 1st Mainboard (FIC) AZ11 Motherboard.
This motherboard has the following features:

Socket A (in my case has Duron 850MHz in it)
VIA KT133 Chipset
AGP4X

I have 768Meg of RAM.

However I too suffered the same "panic linux_init" unable to allocate 
contiguous memory error.

Now the interesting thing is that under Linux Mandrake 8.1, upon running GRUB,
and performing the displaymem command, I get:

grub> displaymem
 EISA Memory BIOS Interface is present
 Address Map BIOS Interface is present
 Lower memory: 640K, Upper memory (to first chipset hole): 3072K
 [Address Range Descriptor entries immediately follow (values are 64-bit)]
   Usable RAM:  Base Address:  0x0 X 4GB + 0x0,
      Length:   0 X 4GB + 655360 bytes
   Reserved:  Base Address:  0x0 X 4GB + 0xa0000,
      Length:   0 X 4GB + 393216 bytes
   Usable RAM:  Base Address:  0x0 X 4GB + 0x100000,
      Length:   0 X 4GB + 3145728 bytes

grub> 

***: quite obviously there is a hole at 3Meg. *****
Linux can deal with that, but Hurd cannot currently. (without the patch where 
the test is ignored).
Perhaps on various BIOSes this hole is created by the BIOS when a certain 
amount of memory is added, or perhaps the AGP card relocates video ram there 
when the system ram zooms up past say 512meg??
I can only guess at the moment. I will try dropping to 512meg and 256meg, and 
also look at BIOS CMOS options.

Jeff Davies
jeff@llandre.freeserve.co.uk