FreeBSD 8 using VERY LITTLE memory

[Brodey Dover]

Hello all,

First post to this list! I have an older PII machine that I upgraded
from 192MB of ram to 672MB of RAM (512, 32, 128) and upon boot the
system's BIOS recognizes all 672MB RAM, FreeBSD also recognizes the
672MB RAM but decides to be nice and cool by using 17MB RAM...bwah?

Here is the output from the dmesg lines.

FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE #0: Sat Nov 21 15:48:17 UTC 2009
    root at almeida.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (348.21-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x652  Stepping = 2
  Features=0x183f9ff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR>
/**** MEMORY STUFF ****/
real memory  = 704905216 (672 MB)
avail memory = 18116608 (17 MB) <=== why? is it a sysctl?
/**** MEMORY STUFF ****/
kbd1 at kbdmux0
acpi0: <COMPAQ CPQB0B5> on motherboard
acpi0: [ITHREAD]
acpi0: reservation of 0, a0000 (3) failed
acpi0: reservation of 100000, 29f00000 (3) failed
Timecounter "ACPI-safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 850
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0xf808-0xf80b on acpi0
pcib0: <ACPI Host-PCI bridge> port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0
pci0: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib0
agp0: <Intel 82443BX (440 BX) host to PCI bridge> on hostb0

there are no other errors that I can find.

Thanks in advance,
Brodey Dover