however, add memory according to certain grouping limitations to preserve the 32-bit access capability of the Equity 386.

There are basically two restrictions: the total amount of memory and the way the memory is installed. Here are the guidelines:

•The total amount of memory must be one of the following: 1MB, 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, 10MB, or 16MB. You cannot, for example, have 3MB or 12MB of memory on the memory card.

•You must fill up any memory bank you use with one size of SIMM. For example, you cannot install just two 1MB SIMMs or two 1MB SIMMs and two 256KB SIMMs in one memory bank.

•You must fill one, two, or four of the memory banks; you cannot fill up just three. And you must fill the banks in numerical order: first bank 0, then 1, then 2 and 3.

•If you use two or four memory banks, they must be configured in pairs: 0 and 1, 2 and 3. For example, if you want to have 8MB of memory and you use four 1MB SIMMs in bank 0, you must use four 1MB SIMMs in bank 1. You cannot install 1MB SIMMs in the first bank and 256KB SIMMs in the second. If you are using all four banks, you could install 1MB SIMMs in banks 0 and 1 and 256KB SIMMs in banks 2 and 3. When the memory banks are configured in pairs, the computer works faster because it can use one-to-one interleave in accessing the memory. Of course, this is not possible if only one bank is filled.

The following table shows the possible configurations you can use:

Memory

Bank 0

Bank 1

Bank 2

Bank 3

1MB

4 x 256KB

 

 

 

2MB

4 x 256KB

4 x 256KB

 

 

4MB

4x1MB

 

 

 

 

or

4 x 256KB

4 x 256KB

4 x 256KB

 

4 x 256KB

8MB

4x1MB

4x1MB

 

 

10MB

4x1MB

4x1MB

4 x 256KB

4 x 256KB

16MB

4x1MB

4x1MB

4x1MB

4x1MB

6-2 Installing Options