Re: [SeaBIOS] How much RAM is required?

[Markus Armbruster]

"Fred ."  writes:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Markus Armbruster  wrote:
> > Frediano Ziglio  writes:
> > > On Fri, 2012-08-10 at 16:24 +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
> > > > Fred . wrote:
> > > > > No, I am not.
> > > >
> > > > Ok, so there's only a hypothesis.
> > > > > But I believe QEMU does have the functionality to load an arbitrary
> > > > > firmware. So the firmware doesn't necessarily have to be SeaBIOS.
> > > >
> > > > As you may know the 8086 reset vector is at 1MB-16 so it will be
> > > > really difficult to run a PC-like machine with less than 1MB of
> > > > memory. I don't believe one has ever existed.
> > >
> > > I remember that my manual of the NEC V20 (a 8086 clone with 10 MHZ!) has
> > > settings for 256KB of RAM (jumpers of course!)
> > >
> > > The ROM was "mapped" (physically!) at f0000 with extended ROM at e0000.
> >
> > According to Wikipedia, the original IBM PC was sold with as little as
> > 16KiB RAM.  IIRC, 64KiB BIOS ROM at the top of the 1MiB address space.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC
> >
> > [...]
> Some machines also have broken memory modules.
> So some computers have 0 byte RAM in that case. :D

Yup, be we *can* catch that in QEMU :)

How much RAM is required?

[Fred .]

Yeah, but how about on real hardware?

Does SeaBIOS have some POST beep codes?

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 9:30 PM, Markus Armbruster  wrote:
> "Fred ."  writes:
> > On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Markus Armbruster  wrote:
> > > Frediano Ziglio  writes:
> > > > On Fri, 2012-08-10 at 16:24 +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
> > > > > Fred . wrote:
> > > > > > No, I am not.
> > > > >
> > > > > Ok, so there's only a hypothesis.
> > > > > > But I believe QEMU does have the functionality to load an arbitrary
> > > > > > firmware. So the firmware doesn't necessarily have to be SeaBIOS.
> > > > >
> > > > > As you may know the 8086 reset vector is at 1MB-16 so it will be
> > > > > really difficult to run a PC-like machine with less than 1MB of
> > > > > memory. I don't believe one has ever existed.
> > > >
> > > > I remember that my manual of the NEC V20 (a 8086 clone with 10 MHZ!) has
> > > > settings for 256KB of RAM (jumpers of course!)
> > > >
> > > > The ROM was "mapped" (physically!) at f0000 with extended ROM at e0000.
> > >
> > > According to Wikipedia, the original IBM PC was sold with as little as
> > > 16KiB RAM.  IIRC, 64KiB BIOS ROM at the top of the 1MiB address space.
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC
> > >
> > > [...]
> > Some machines also have broken memory modules.
> > So some computers have 0 byte RAM in that case. :D
>
> Yup, be we *can* catch that in QEMU :)