All - I have a newish Proliant ML110 (P4 3.0GHz HT, 4GB memory, 3x36GB 10K RPM Ultra320 drives on an LSI Ultra320 controller) with what appears to be a plain old Phoenix BIOS (not HP server BIOS) on a regular ATX motherboard. It's a workgroup/departmental server, not an enterprise class machine, I think that's why it uses a COTS motherboard. It does not have any AGP slots, only PCI-X slots. I got it for really cheap so I decided to put in a decent PCI video and sound card and use it for a workstation. I noticed that when it boots, the system counts 4GB memory, but after POST is says that there are only 3.6GB. I called HP about it and they said that the system reserves a chunk of memory for each PCI card. I pulled the video and sound cards, and sure enough, the system saw more memory. So my question is - what's up with this? Why do none of my other machines act this way? I've got workstations from Dell and other servers from HP that don't do this. Those machines don't have PCI-X slots though. I assume that is relevant. Anyone got an explanation as to why this machine is reserving so much darned memory for the PCI cards? I am seriously tempted to yank the motherboard and drop in another one from Intel or someone like that. I paid a lot of money for the 4GB memory and I want all of it, you know? :-) Thanks! Thomas
