Hi, On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 07:51:03AM +0100, Thorsten Sauter wrote:
> Hello, > > On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 01:04:55AM -0500, Owen B. Mehegan wrote: > > Node: 00B0D0A42B88 > > DHCP... > > TFTP............................ > > File transfer error: Image file too large for low memory. > > are you sure, that the error message means the memory for you laptop. > How many ram is available in this beast? :) > > While playing with tftp and network boot, I'll got this error message on > many machines (i386, 3com or intel nic). The machines have 32MB and up > to 512 MB ram, so a small 1.44MB floppy should be small enough to fit > into the memory. Ah. Welcome to the lovely 16-bit boot process of Intel machines. <lecture> Intel boxes boot up in real mode, in which 8086-style addressing is enabled. In this mode, you don't have 32-bit memory offsets, but rather 16-bit segment addresses that are shifted 4 bits to the left before adding a 16-bit offset address, forming a 20-bit address. In short, until something switches the CPU to protected mode that uses segment registers in a wildly different fashion, software can only address the first megabyte of memory. The PC normally has up to 640 kB of RAM in that first megabyte; the rest contains part of your framebuffer and some ROM. So that's all you can access during the boot process. </lecture> So if the NICs boot ROM contains only real mode code, 1.44 MB will indeed /not/ fit into memory. Try a bare bones kernel; 512 Kb should definitely work. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies / Emile van Bergen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 | http://www.e-advies.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
