Thus spake Mitsuru IWASAKI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > This approach is okay with me in the sense that it doesn't break
> > anything that wasn't already broken, but as you say, I think we
> > can do better. Below is a patch that merely extracts the basemem
> > size from the bootinfo structure for the purposes of mapping the
> > EBDA. I retained the int 12h fallback just to be safe, but I
> > think the bootinfo structure is initialized with a valid basemem
> > for all loaders since at least 1998. (Maybe the fallbacks in the
> > kernel should be removed entirely to avoid redundancy, or moved
> > from loader and boot2 to locore.s.)
>
> Yes, this idea was in my first patch actually, and this was not
> good solution as Bruce explained. Please see the archive at:
>
>http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=94412+0+archive/2002/freebsd-current/20021006.freebsd-current
It sounds like the basic objection is, ``We came up with this
feature in 1995 and never used it, so we shouldn't start using it
now.'' Fine, but I still maintain that determining the memory
size in real mode like everyone else is the right thing to do.
Are there any objections to the following?
- Remove the redundant and unused memory detection code
from boot2, loader, and libi386.
- Mark the bootinfo fields bi_basemem and bi_extmem as
deprecated.
- Determine basemem in locore.s using 15h:e820h, with a
fallback to int 12h.
- Remove the basemem calculation from machdep.c.
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