Well, I finally found a machine that would not properly recognize memory. free kept telling me I had 64M while I had 128. The problem was that some of the 128 was "shared" by the on-board AGP video and the BIOS didn't know how to report that. OK with kedit, I add a line in lilo.conf append = "mem=120M" (Since 8M is "shared" to the AGP --manufacturer's term, not mine--I would tend to use the terms "taken, grabbed, stolen") Then # /sbin/lilo and at the next boot.... I have 120. This was an AMI BIOS on a NEC Motherboard. Previously I had instant recognition of the "shared video memory" situation on a Shuttle HOT 599 and on an FIC PAG 2130, both of which use Award BIOS, no append line necessary. But, this NEC Board didn't stop there in its efforts to confound me. I saw the legend silkscreened on the almost impossible to access motherboard that said "IDE1" OK--now the manual (8.5x11 stapled sheets) fails to mention that they use IDE0 and IDE1 instead of the more conventional IDE1 and IDE2, so the hard disk goes into IDE1 and the LS120(master) and CDROM(slave) go into the unlabeled one --- *** M A N D R A K E 7.0-2 IS SO SO COOL*** Yes, I am booting off of /dev/hdc and I installed that way and it didn't even bother to tell me that things were backwards or that /dev/hdc is an unusual place for a boot record, and if I hadn't used linuxconf to try to modify lilo.conf for the append line, I might still be blissfully ignorant--until I tried to look at fstab. I remember the pain and suffering to try to get things to boot from /dev/hdc before. Maybe you folk at Mandrakesoft did it because ABIT decided to put its business IDE connections (ATA/66) on separate channels, but whatever the reason, it is neat. Quality advocates call such experiences "lagniappe" that little extra spice which promotes customer loyalty. Civileme
