> 16MB on ISA bus, with aha1542a

Tim Wright tim at delluk.uucp
Mon Jul 23 18:42:07 AEST 1990


In <654400008 at cdp> steve at cdp.UUCP writes:

>I am trying to run over 16MB on an ISA bus machine
>(that holds 24MB).  We use an adaptek aha1542a SCSI
>controller, and realize that it cannot DMA into
>memory over 16MB.

>I heard in this group of some parameters in the AT&T
>UNIX kernel "3.2...", that allocate kernel buffers
>to be used for DMA, when there is a request to DMA
>into memory in certain ranges.  Presumably, any
>3.2.* UNIX that has these parameters, is capable of
>disallowing DMA to memory over 16MB.  The parameters
>are called DMAEXCL and DMAABLEBUF.

>I am running Interactive 2.0.2, and it doesn't have
>DMAABLEBUF.  I wonder if the new release (2.0.2)
>does.

DMAABLEBUF and DMAEXCL are in the kernel. However the most important
thing is to change /etc/default/boot and alter/add the line
MEMRANGE=0-640KL0,1M-16128K:0,16M-128M:1
which I believe tells the kernel where DMAABLE memory is located - the
buffers parameter merely allocates some buffers to do DMA into if you
go outside this range. That at least is the way I understand it.
As you can see - we block out 640K to 1MB. I think MEMRANGE only
refers to whether or not the memory is DMAABLE but I'm sure someone
will correct me if I'm wrong :-)

Tim
--
Tim Wright, Unix Support               | Email: ...!ukc!delluk!tim
Dell Computer Corp. (UK), Bracknell    | (pending domain registration).



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