Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!dptg!att!mtuxo!lzfme!jwi
From: jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: BIOS Shadowing / Memory usage???
Summary: Shut off shadow BIOS
Message-ID: <1491@lzfme.att.com>
Date: 18 Jul 89 13:30:36 GMT
References: <6541@athertn.Atherton.COM> <45900251@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: AT&T, Lincroft NJ
Lines: 36

| |Somebody writes:
| |
| |I recently bought a PC with AMI bios that supports bios memory shadowing.
| |The system was sold as a 1 Mb system.  When I boot, the machine goes
| |through a memory check of 1Mb.  However, when I use Norton SI, it can
| |only find 640Kb of memory.  I contacted the company I bought the system
| |from and they said the other 384Kb is used by the system for system stuff
| |like bios shadowing, etc.  My question is this: is this a reasonable 
| |explaination?  Does bios shadowing actually capture main memory and make
| |it transparent to DOS?  What other system features use main memory this
| |way?  Seems to me that I didn't get a 1Mb machine, but rather a 640Kb
| |machine.
| 
| Doug McDonald writes:
| 
| I got bit by the same syndrome, on a Dell 310. Yes, you really got
| only a 640K machine, and yes, they should not advertise them 
| as 1 meg systems. Nor the 4meg-384K systems as 4 meg systems.
| If they advertise them as 4 meg systems, and I have a program that 
| REQUIRES 4 whole megs (as I do), they are in trouble.

On my DELL (220) you can shut off the shadowing of BIOS and use the
other 384KB as extended memory. RTFM on your setup program and see
if you can do it too.

On the AMI bias, you're probably out of luck.

Jim Winer ..!lzfme!jwi (Usually unable to reply to email outside AT&T)

Those persons who advocate censorship offend my religion.

Upuaut:	a wolf-headed Egyptian deity | Voodoo: the art of sticking ideas
	assigned as Guidance System  |         into people and watching
	for the Barque of Ra.        |         them bleed.

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