payne@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Doug Payne [DCS]) (03/03/90)
I've written a small program which reads consecutive 1Kb blocks from /dev/mem until it gets an error. It was done in an attempt to figure out the real memory size of a (non-NeXT) system which doesn't display the size at boot time, and which is exhibiting behaviour which indicates that it is using less real memory than it physically has. Anyway, I decided to try it on the NeXT out of curiousity. I can read 16Mb worth (16,384 1Kb blocks) on an 8Mb system! Any ideas why this occurs? I've tried it on various other machines ranging from a Sun SPARCServer390 to an IBM PS/2 running AIX, all with the expected results. Howcome the NeXT differs? (It really does have 8Mb of memory; I checked the board, and it claims 7.99Mb at boot time ... close enough). ../doug