Karl O. Pinc wrote: > On 07/06/2007 06:46:26 PM, Chris Smith wrote: >>> I assume the problem is not enough RAM because when I >>> add more RAM everything works fine. >> >> Repeatable? Sure you've ruled out a seating problem? > > Yes, repeatable.
yep, I'd believe that. Some time back (3.6?), when I stuffed five 4-port dc(4) cards into a Dell GX1 (late PII system), I found it panicked early in the boot process if I had only 16M RAM in the thing (yes, I actually have some 16M DIMMs I was able to stuff in the machine!). After a bit of discussion with developers who know more than I (which is pretty close to "all of them"), it was explained that each NIC requires some buffer space, so the more NICs you have, the more RAM you better have for the kernel. If you don't have enough RAM for the kernel, it goes boom. Sounds like I need to do some more "small RAM" testing again. I am actually somewhat surprised (but not shocked) that 32M is not enough for three NICs, but things have grown since the 3.6 days. It's getting hard to get down to the 16M-32M range anymore on systems that aren't painful to ssh into. :) Nick.
