ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

Yes. In my case, Memtest-86 showed 7109 MB and gnome-system-monitor of Linux Mint 17, 32 bit reports 6.8 MiB, with 8 GiB installed. (I had no installed Win32 OS available to check this.) Values like that seem to be normal.

Dmitry wrote that the BIOS memory table is incorrect.

[Pete]

Hi All

Having noticed that ArcaOS and Windows7 both report only about 2Gb physical RAM installed I just ran memtest (v4) which also shows almost 2GB (2004Mb).

Mainboard BIOS shows 2 x 2Gb RAM chips and does not indicate a problem.

I guess I need to replace 1 of the 2Gb RAM chips but how do I tell which 1 on a dual channel system? - is it simply a case of suck it and see?


Regards

Pete

[Dave Yeo]

You could start by testing with one stick, and then the other. Most dual channel systems should revert to single channel with a loss of performance.
It does seem weird that one stick just doesn't seem to work once booted. The one time I had a stick fail, the system crashed and I lucked out as the first stick I removed (out of 4 512 MB sticks) fixed the issue.

[Pete]

Hi Dave

Tried testing with only 1 stick installed - system does not start at all, goes into a trying to start routine after power on but does not get anywhere with either stick. Seems the mainboard needs 2 sticks installed...


Regards

Pete

[roberto]

[C:\]mem -v
...
Available virtual memory:   3,760 MB
...

Hi Ivan
I understand that you have the virtualaddresslimit of the config.sys in 3072, and it will work fine for you. But could you do the test to put 3760, and tell us if it works, or if at startup it tells you that you have an erroneous value and puts it by default.?
Saludos

[ivan]

Hi roberto,

Will do when I reboot the computer in a few week time - it is on 24/7 until it starts to slow down.

[Doug Bissett]

But could you do the test to put 3760, and tell us if it works, or if at startup it tells you that you have an erroneous value and puts it by default.?

Since 3072 (2048 in old versions of OS/2) is the maximum allowable, 3760 should always tell you that it is invalid (does, for me). 3072 doesn't always work either, but it won't tell you that it is an invalid number. I don't remember what happens, but it isn't good. I always use 2560 (but 2760 should also work), just so I don't have to figure out if machines work with 3072, or not. 2560 seems to be sufficient for my needs, and leaves me with 1270944 bytes of upper shared memory (varies as I use it), after everything is loaded.

I have never seen anything drop upper shared memory below 1000000 bytes, yet (I may have missed it). Lower shared memory, on the other hand, is at 217856, with most things loaded. I have seen that drop to zero (with resulting catastrophe), when something (usually multiple videos in Firefox), starts eating it. However, with the Firefox TURBO thing, I haven't seen that happen recently. I also turn off media.autoplay.enabled in Firefox about:config, which has helped a lot. It means one extra click to play a video that I do want to play, but the rest don't start automatically.

[Dave Yeo]

For a while I couldn't link xul.dll without having VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT set to 3072. Eventually Mozilla changed the build process to not need as much memory.
As for the maximum value that works, it depends on how much of the (actual hardware) upper address space is taken by PCI devices and such.

[Rich Walsh]

[C:\]mem -v
...
Available virtual memory:   3,760 MB
...

I understand that you have the virtualaddresslimit of the config.sys in 3072, and it will work fine for you. But could you do the test to put 3760, and tell us if it works, or if at startup it tells you that you have an erroneous value and puts it by default.?

'mem' tells you how much physical RAM is accessible by OS/2. This has NOTHING to do with Virtual Address Limit which is a software concept unrelated to actual physical memory.

Every process has 4096mb of "virtual address space". The kernel always uses the top 1024mb of addresses from 3072 to 4096 mb. Virtual Address Limit determines how much of the remaining 3072mb a program is allowed to use.

[ivan]

Thanks Rich,  I thought it was something like that from things I have read.  I thought I should satisfy roberto and try it but now I won't bother - rebooting the comp when things slow down is nothing more than using the reboot option from the xworkplace shutdown.

[Andi B.]

You can easily bring the upper shared memory down with Seamonkey and I think some javascripts. When I work on some wiki sites (Atlassian Confluence) it only needs a few tabs open and you have to have an eye on upper shared memory as it is all eaten up very fast. Even VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 does not help very much here.

[guzzi]

Really bad news. I think I'll rather stick to my 2 GB FM2+ mainboard.

I put an old X800 in and now have:
C:\sys\install\DETECT>mem /v

Total physical memory:      8.162 MB
Accessible to system:       3.567 MB
Additional (PAE) memory:    4.595 MB

Resident memory:              185 MB
Available virtual memory:   2.920 MB

Available process memory:
  Private low memory:         315 MB
  Private high memory:      1.344 MB
  Shared low memory:          212 MB
  Shared high memory:         957 MB

[roberto]

You can easily bring the upper shared memory down with Seamonkey and I think some javascripts. When I work on some wiki sites (Atlassian Confluence) it only needs a few tabs open and you have to have an eye on upper shared memory as it is all eaten up very fast. Even VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 does not help very much here.

I have also seen this problem of running out of memory in some web pages, try putting this in config.sys:
SET JAVA_HIGH_MEMORY=1
I think it improves, but you will say.
Saludos

[roberto]

'mem' tells you how much physical RAM is accessible by OS/2. This has NOTHING to do with Virtual Address Limit which is a software concept unrelated to actual physical memory.

Every process has 4096mb of "virtual address space". The kernel always uses the top 1024mb of addresses from 3072 to 4096 mb. Virtual Address Limit determines how much of the remaining 3072mb a program is allowed to use.

Look for a computer with that defect of abnormal high memory.
Although it has nothing to do with it, the behavior is different.
I provided to put a value of virtualaddresslimit of 3100, and during the start it stopped but did not continue when pressing enter. What it does on a normal computer.Ivan was talking about amd, I have seen it in intel, so I think of something in the bios.
saludos