Hello.

I've got a "new" computer with Abit KA7-100 mb and Athlon 700 Thunderbird.
I moved my Soundblaster 128 PCI from my older computer to new.
Unfortunately, when playing mp3 files with mpg123 it doesn't work properly,
although it did in older computer. Searching through NetBSD bugs database
I found two very similar reported bugs: #10159 and #10356. Conclusion in
these reports is that eap driver is working properly and problem is related
to KX133 chipset. No fix :-(

On http://www.viahardware.com/faq/ka7/faqsound.html there is proposed
solution to my problem, that is selecting the 15M-16M memory hole in BIOS.
When I tried that, mpg123 played my music just fine. New problem is that
NetBSD reported total memory = 14976 KB and avail memory = 11820 KB,
instead of correct total memory = 255 MB and avail memory = 234 MB.

My next step in this adventure was setting REALEXTMEM option to 261120 (in
KB), as reported by BIOS. When I booted again, kernel reported correct
total and avail memory values, but hung after printing biomask netmask and
ttymask values. I tried twice, with kernel hanging after printing 'boot
device: wd0' and 'root wd0a dumps on wd0b' on second time. No messages, no
jump to debugger, it just hangs and doesn't react to pressing numLock
(harddisk LED is on). When I set memory hole back to disabled (ie. no
memory hole), it works again.

Now, I have two choices: I can run with 15 megs of memory with sound, or
with 256 megs of memory without sound.

I think the problem can be corrected by telling kernel not to use physical
memory between 15M-16M, but I found no options to set this. Is it possible
to reserve memory? Is there a better solution (buying new computer components
is not ;-)?

Thanks.

Peter Stibrany