Re memory issues

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Sorry, that original post of mine wasn't meant to go out until I had
checked further, and it turns out it WASN'T the power features but some
invisible software that's hogging conventional memory. The interesting
thing that turned up in the process of debugging that is that ACPI (i.e.,
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) can indeed be turned off in
the BIOS. BUT if you've installed Win with it turned on and then turn it
off, on reboot Windows CANNOT FIND THE MBR!. Evidently ACPI handles far
more than just power management.
	Robert wrote that on two of his machines, "the USB drivers are loaded by
the BIOS into what would otherwise be high DOS memory, occupying the
areas required for EMS with XyWrite." So much for the virtues of
name-brand hardware (Sorry, couldn't resist that, having just gone
through a big hassle with an old IBM I was setting up for a friend). But
isn't the EMS page frame (which is only 64K) taken from between 768 and
896K (i.e., in the UMBs--000A0000-FFFFFFFF, with 000D0000-000DFFFF the
usual location), not the HMA? Or was Robert using "High Memory"
generically (i.e., anything above 640K)? And I'm not sure that a DOS
Virtual Machine (which is what one is using when one runs anything from a
DOS prompt/box within Win) is really bound by that; the explanations I
have read seem contradictory.
	Actually, the loading of USB appears anomalous. I just checked my own
Control Panel (this is on the old K6/2; haven't got e-mail on the new
Duron box yet). When I look at the memory usage listing, all conventional
memory (00000000-0009FFFF) is listed as "system board extensions for PnP
BIOS"; part of the UMBs (000A0000-000CBFFF) are occupied by the AGP card
driver; 000CC000-000EFFFF are unoccupied; 000F0000-000FFFFF are
"Motherboard resources". BUT when I check the resources of the USB
connection, it's listed as E400-E41F, which in Device Manager notation
would be (I think?) 000E4000-000E4100--right smack in the middle of that
allegedly "unoccupied" range of UMBs. Now this is Win 98, which was right
at the beginning of USB (and doesn't, I discover, support USB 2), so
maybe it isn't too savvy about USB?
	Jordan's comment about keeping track of one's BIOS settings is good
advice. What I've been doing is having another system (my laptop lately)
with Xy on it up and running while I'm checking the BIOS of the other
system. I create a Xy doc with column tables and type in all the BIOS
features, with the possible settings in the second column, type-coded
(e.g., default is bold, actual setting ital, original setting
underlined.) A lot of work, but well worth it.
Patricia
PS Anyone know of a nice listing of memory with both DOS and DM notation?
I HATE counting zeros.