Re: [tlug] Re: Tweaking the kernel

[Dan Lindfield <dan.lindfield@example.com>]

Tobias Diedrich wrote:

>>This is getting very interesting. The cause of my frustration with the
>>notebook's speed under MDK9.1 is that I have 256Mb of RAM backed by
>>512Kb of L2 cache. Both of which should ensure good performance (When I
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
> Do you have a K6-2 or a K6-2+ ?
> If you have the former, you may want to check if your cacheable area is
> big enough for that much ram. The K6-2+ has a builtin 2nd level cache
> which supports up to 4GB, but for onboard 2nd level cache the limits may
> vary and may be quiet low.
> If your system boots a lot faster when you pass mem=128M or mem=64M on the
> kernel command line, then you have a cacheable area problem.
> The only thing you can do then is to use the uncached memory as swap.


I'm not sure if I have K6-2 or K6-2+, I've scoured my manuals and 
specifications but I can't get a clear answer which leads me to think it 
might be a straight K6-2. I'm not sure if I understand your comment: 
"you may want to check if your cacheable area is big enough for that 
much ram", could you elaborate please?

Anyway, as you reccomended I tried passing different mem values at boot. 
To start off I changed the mem value on Mandrake Control Center / Lilo 
Configuration / Precise RAM size, interestingly this resulted in Lilo 
hanging at boot. After a rescue I repeated the action thinking I might 
have made a mistake, but no it hang at boot again! Has anyone seen this 
on Mandrake? So I gave up on MDK Control Center and manually edited 
/etc/lilo.config, I tried three different mem sizes: mem=64, mem=128 and 
mem=256. Basically the speed of the machine at boot did not change. From 
this I deduce one of two things: 1) I'm not passing mem=*** correctly at 
boot. 2) The notebook is performing as good as if it had 64Mb RAM.

Any thoughts?

Dan