freebsd 6.1 floppy installation problem - boot loader finds only 16MB, but I have 256 MB - and it hangs

Voštenák Vladimír vohtenbk at stonline.sk
Sat Sep 23 12:49:22 PDT 2006


Hi

I have an old HP NETSERVER PRO 2xpentium pro, 256 MB ram, 
and I tried to install the actual FREEBSD 6.1 there. I made 3 
floppies: boot, kernel1 and kernel2. When it starts booting from 
the boot floppy, the loader show I only have 16 MB of RAM 
(instead 256MB I have there). Then it asks for kernel1 and 2 
disk, and boot disk again. It gives me also the entry FREEBSD 
display with countdown - to choose boot type - default, no 
acpi, secure etc. I tried it all, but it alwaysl hangs after about 5 
second after any choice. So I must just reboot. I think it is just 
because the lack of RAM, because, I think it requirets at least 24 
MB of RAM.
I have found something about this on the web, that it is 
necessary options "MAXMEM=n" to use all the RAM, because old 
BIOSes shows just first 16 MB or so, but I am just doing the 
installation. So how can I modify the kernel on the floppies to 
use such option during the installation from floppies? Or should I 
install from other media???Please can you help me with 
this??????How can I make the installation boot floppy see all the 
RAM I have?
Thank you very much for your reply.

Greetings

Vladimír Voštenák



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