- Joined
- Apr 27, 2002
- Location
- Council Bluffs, Iowa
Can you boot up a system without ANY ram?
I'm talking just into the bios setup...
I'm talking just into the bios setup...
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Off the wall question...
- Thread starter Kinerry
- Start date
Johnny Knoxville
Disabled
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- May 29, 2002
no, not that i know of anyway
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2002
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- Chicago, IL
Why don't you try it and find out?
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2002
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- San diego or UC Davis
I bet if you could hack the bios, and some how set up some virtual ram off a HDD or a Ram disk then you could boot up.
OP
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2002
- Location
- Council Bluffs, Iowa
- Thread Starter
- #5
thats the point, i tried to test my new mobo without ram, thats why I asked
I have a d bracket and its telling me its not getting past initialization, the next step would be ram initialization, so I am guessing i gotta wait for the ram lol
I have a d bracket and its telling me its not getting past initialization, the next step would be ram initialization, so I am guessing i gotta wait for the ram lol
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- Mar 1, 2002
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- Texas
Funny, I thought older systems could boot with just the 640kb of "conventialnalnalsatnelnalsdnlafsndl"* RAM installed.
*No, I don't know how to spell it.
*No, I don't know how to spell it.
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ThePerfectCore said:Funny, I thought older systems could boot with just the 640kb of "conventialnalnalsatnelnalsdnlafsndl"* RAM installed.
*No, I don't know how to spell it.
LOL..........
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Hi,
No, it is *impossible* for a x86 PC to boot without any RAM at all. Note that having the so called '640K real mode RAM' is already having some RAM (in fact, it's having quite much... during 8 years PCs did not have more than that).
The reason for all this is that BIOS needs RAM to establish your descriptor tables, and interrupt tables. and for the code itself. Even if part of all this *can* be supplied with ROM, there are defined BIOS variables (which must be in RAM) that are in the segment x040 and that any BIOS updates as part of its initialization routines.
Regards
FTC
No, it is *impossible* for a x86 PC to boot without any RAM at all. Note that having the so called '640K real mode RAM' is already having some RAM (in fact, it's having quite much... during 8 years PCs did not have more than that).
The reason for all this is that BIOS needs RAM to establish your descriptor tables, and interrupt tables. and for the code itself. Even if part of all this *can* be supplied with ROM, there are defined BIOS variables (which must be in RAM) that are in the segment x040 and that any BIOS updates as part of its initialization routines.
Regards
FTC
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- May 23, 2001
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Yeah. My "wicked fast" 486 laptop has 640K of RAM and barely run Solitaire. I've never seen the cards bounce that slowly before...
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
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- Highland Park, NJ
On a modern machine the only way to boot and avoid RAM is to create conditions that forces BIOS BOOT LOCK, normally this occurs after a bad flash, the BIOS is prevented from initialising by the BOOT BLOCK sector in the BIOS Chip and it falls back on system defaults. Unless you have an extra EPROM lying around I would say wait for your memory...
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