evil, Thanks for your interest. You might get better luck than jack_uta since you don't have i945 graphics, which I didn't figure out how to correctly remap its memory without corrupting the screen. Based on your lspci output, I believe you can get 3.5GiB RAM. Send me your MTRR register values (look...

OK, at least we eliminated the memory corruption problem and verified that the former 8Mb RAM can be reclaimed. Since there can be so many inconsistent settings due to the PCI remapping, I've inserted a call to do a debug reset on the GMA 950, which claims to reset everything to power on state (earl...

New sysrescue_grub2.iso posted. Now I disable that memory range (4 KiB) as well as reenable the 8MiB range I turned off earlier to play safe. The biggest surprise is that I'm getting the *same* error when I run memtest (except my EHCI controller was at d0504000). It's quite surprising I never experi...

Sorry for the wait - I've been on the Amtrak the last 2 days from Washington to St. Paul. Not a good experience Congratulations - it looks like you've found the problem. I was suspecting using a conflicting memory region, but you're the 1st to find it with memtest86+. I tried to use memtest in the p...

The PCI and MTRR configuration look sane. Touchmem runs without problems - another sign things are working. Does Kubuntu or Windows boot now without hanging - regardless of the screen (as long as it's legible)? Also, send me a picture of the screen problem you're describing. I was going to try to re...

Got it. I didn't see anything wrong with what I'm doing based on your data. I did disable another 8MiB region to be safe. We'll have to apply the fix ups and boot into a minimalistic Linux and debug now. Download and burn sysrescue_grub2.iso again and do the following: 1. boot cd; at grub menu, choo...

OK, I see what you're doing. Good idea - it will allow easier diagnosis. I don't know what's wrong with the display, but a display problem shouldn't cause the system to hang. Let's try to fix the hanging first. I suspect it's due to any one of these problems 1. e820 memory map contains memory region...

At 2 it says bootloader not found I didn't know that. I thought all Windows partitions have a bootloader in sector 1, but it seems XP and Vista are using the bootloader installed on the XP partition. Do you see any problems if I try booting off of a USB flash drive I assume you mean you install win...

Glad to see it was solved this easily. One possibility why Windows isn't starting is because I hard coded the Windows partitions as (hd0,1) and (hd0,2) in grub.cfg. Maybe Grub numbers the disks differently depending on what you have plugged in. Let's verify that (hd0,1) really is where Windows is. 1...

New CD uploaded. Now it sets the display to 80x25 text mode by calling a VGA BIOS function, followed by a call to grub_cls() (clear screen). Rather than mess with all those low level GMA950 configuration registers, I chose to use the higher level VGA BIOS functions. One problem I forsee is the fonts...

I've asked how to restore the display to text mode on the Mesa 3D (www.mesa3d.org) developer mailing list. Someone said to look at the i915 suspend/resume code, which contains code to save/restore the VGA palette, font memory, etc. I'll take a look at that.

OK. I expected the screen was garbling when I set TOLUD since that switches the memory used for the VGA frame buffer to a new uninitialized location, which explains the garbage you see. I'm thinking maybe the computer is still functional and only the screen needs to be refreshed. Have you tried pres...

Sorry about that. Doing this system level programming on my own machine was already difficult to debug, so you can imagine the difficulty of doing it remotely. Anyways, I've uploaded a new CD. It displays even more prompts and debugging info. It corrects 1 major mistake. Previously, I assumed the GM...

Here's a new CD http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~yzhang67/sysrescue_grub2.iso . I've added some debug messages that you need to press a key to get past. If it crashes before you get to the menu, tell me the last message you see. Sorry for the delay Quite the opposite for me. If you're wondering why I have ...

Good, it works. Still see the Total Memory in BIOS as 3072 This is expected, and doesn't mean much since I don't apply the fix ups until after BIOS initialization. All the BIOS patch does is disable locking the memory controller configuration. Like I said earlier, I suspect the e820 memory map I sem...

I assume your laptop does use the other BIOS file. A most grievous mistake. Here's the modded DL00206A.WPH http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~yzhang/NEW2.WPH . I've also slipped it into phlash.iso, the DOS boot disk (execute "phlash16 DL00206A.WPH" or "phlash16 DL01108A.WPH"). Although I can't test the BIOS,...

That is very strange. Can you try flashing the original 3.12 BIOS at http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-67008 . I assumed this should work for all 3000 N100s. Actually, I think I know why it's not working. There are actually 2 BIOSes that come with t...

Well, I've found what's causing grub2 to crash when running the CD in a VM. It's because I hard coded a e820 physical memory map that assumes there's 4gb. Grub uses the memory at the highest accessible address, so if the memory doesn't exist, it won't function. Since you have 4gb, I'm guessing the p...

Are you using 64bit XP? 2 years ago, someone claimed WinPhlash doesn't work on 64 bit Windows http://www.eyt.ca/blog/item/135/ . Maybe you can try WinPhlash64. If that doesn't work, I can add a DOS boot option to the CD with phlash16. I don't know what's causing the CD to reboot, but I've seen it be...

Reboot using systemrescuecd. Boot to the CD. - to clarify, use my sysrescue_grub2.iso, not the original, which is 250Mb. However, use the original to save dmesg and lspci when you get the chance. Other than that, you're good to go. I never tested this on Windows XP, but I don't think this is a prob...

Well, I wasn't able to upload my original CD image because 250Mb exceeds my limit. After stripping it of everything except the kernel and initrd, it's down to 14Mb. The directions remain the same, except you won't see the rescue64 option and instead of executing "reboot" you need to hold down the po...

Well, I guess I had more time than I expected. I've built a CD for testing and installing my mod. Get it here: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~yzhang67/sysrescue_grub2.iso (will be uploaded in a few hours after this post). First, make sure you've flashed your BIOS with my modified one: http://www.cc.gatec...

You're in luck and I'm glad to see people still interested. It's unfortunate I didn't see this in 2007 when more people were using T60s and 3000 N100s. When I got my 3000 N100 in spring 2007, I thought its 1Gb was plenty. According to http://www.buy.com/prod/lenovo-3000-n100-notebook-intel-core-2-du...

"Unfortunately there's no attachment option on this forum." I'll post the complete code on my website later. I still don't know how many people out there are willing to go this far for an extra 512Mb RAM (more or less, depending on memory used by peripherals). To build a usable solution for end user...

Great, looks like I have customers. Doing all those fixups I described in the BIOS is the ideal solution, but is not possible currently because: 1. My fix-up code has hard coded values that assume certain PCI addresses, TOLUD, etc. Dynamic detection anyone? 2. ACPI sleep/resume is broken, so until i...

Good news. I have a Lenovo 3000 N100 and I managed to mod it to recognize 3.5Gb RAM. I'm pretty sure Lenovo isn't going to bother to release an updated BIOS, so I decided to do it myself. Here's how I did it. 1. NOP some instruction in ROMEXEC0.ROM (BIOS code) that sets D_LCK bit in i945 memory cont...