Windows memory requirements [was RE: Google v AltaVista - Re: Big Alphas (was Re: FS: HP AlphaServer DS15)]
23 Nov
2012
23 Nov
'12
11:32 a.m.
From: Liam Proven
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 6:57 AM
Ah, apparently *all* the Win9x codebase struggles with
approaching a
gig.
For some of them, you can't /install/ with more
than a certain amount,
but once it's running you can put the extra RAM back in.
Not just the 9x systems.
Back when I was doing systems administration at XKL, I brought in a new
Dell server (dual Pentium 3 Xeons, 4GB RAM in 1 card, you know, little
box for 1997 :-) running NT 4.0 Terminal Server. As I was adding
engineering applications to the base install, a DLL got overwritten, the
box crashed, and I had to re-install from the ground up--beginning about
19:00 on a Friday night.
Long story short, I was on the phone to Round Rock from about 21:00 till
06:00 the next morning, struggling with the install, which would die at
the point where the system re-boots to run from the disk instead of the
CD. Turned out that the install version could not run in more than 1GB.
After the shift change at Dell, the new guy on the phone said he thought
there was a BIOS setting which would handle the issue, rather than my
having to have a 1GB card FedEx'd for Monday morning. Yup, the BIOS
indeed had a setting which was named roughly "Pretend I have only 256MB
in this box".
Gack.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
23 Nov
23 Nov
12:56 p.m.
From: Liam Proven
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 6:57 AM
Ah, apparently *all* the Win9x codebase struggles with
approaching a
gig.
For some of them, you can't /install/ with more
than a certain amount,
but once it's running you can put the extra RAM back in.
On one of my systems, I run Win98SE with 1.5G of memory and dual P3s.
It took a bit of doing, but fortunately others have worked out details
of memory managers that make the job pretty easly. In my case, I simply
set up DOS with a 1GB RAMdisk allocated from the top of memory and then
installed Win98SE. No issues whatsoever.
I don't know what the workaround with NT 4 would be, as there's not a
DOS base to work from.
--Chuck
24 Nov
24 Nov
7:14 a.m.
On 23 November 2012 20:56, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
From: Liam Proven
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 6:57 AM
Well, there would be the minor issue of W98 not having any trace of
SMP support so one of your CPUs doing nothing at all.
But apart from that, no. :?)
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
Ah, apparently *all* the Win9x codebase struggles
with approaching a
gig.
For some of them, you can't /install/ with
more than a certain amount,
but once it's running you can put the extra RAM back in.
On one of my systems, I run Win98SE with 1.5G of memory and dual P3s. It
took a bit of doing, but fortunately others have worked out details of
memory managers that make the job pretty easly. In my case, I simply set up
DOS with a 1GB RAMdisk allocated from the top of memory and then installed
Win98SE. No issues whatsoever.
7:15 a.m.
On 23 November 2012 19:32, Rich Alderson <RichA at vulcan.com> wrote:
From: Liam Proven
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 6:57 AM
Ohhhhh yes, I'd read about that and seen such a BIOS setting, but I
never encountered such a well-specced box back in the NT4 days.
I kinda miss NT, in a way. It was a relatively simple, clean OS, I
felt I knew it pretty well inside out. Win2K is too big to know like
that and the PnP stuff makes it not 100% deterministic.
XP onwards, just forget it. Mind of its own.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
Ah, apparently *all* the Win9x codebase struggles
with approaching a
gig.
For some of them, you can't /install/ with
more than a certain amount,
but once it's running you can put the extra RAM back in.
Not just the 9x systems.
Back when I was doing systems administration at XKL, I brought in a new
Dell server (dual Pentium 3 Xeons, 4GB RAM in 1 card, you know, little
box for 1997 :-) running NT 4.0 Terminal Server. As I was adding
engineering applications to the base install, a DLL got overwritten, the
box crashed, and I had to re-install from the ground up--beginning about
19:00 on a Friday night.
Long story short, I was on the phone to Round Rock from about 21:00 till
06:00 the next morning, struggling with the install, which would die at
the point where the system re-boots to run from the disk instead of the
CD. Turned out that the install version could not run in more than 1GB.
After the shift change at Dell, the new guy on the phone said he thought
there was a BIOS setting which would handle the issue, rather than my
having to have a 1GB card FedEx'd for Monday morning. Yup, the BIOS
indeed had a setting which was named roughly "Pretend I have only 256MB
in this box".
Gack.
4411
days inactive
4412
days old
3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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cclist＠sydex.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
RichA＠vulcan.com