I have a compaq presario 1685 with 64meg of ram. When putting in 256meg sim, the system sees it at start up, how do I get SuSE to use it? There is no noticeable increase in performance. free doesn't show any more memory.

If you have not been able to get the PC to see the new memory (at start up you should see the extra memory being tested - i.e. sized). Do the F10 setup and change the memory size. Usually the PC will report that the new memory size has changed on start up and you only have to depress F1 to accept the newer value and you should be OK.

On another matter - You will need to setup the BIOS to use "Other OS" than Windows to
boot Linux. This was the case with an old Compaq I deal with last month.

Have a google around for the lastest news now at HP sites.

Hope this assists.
Cheers.

In setup (f10) I did change the "DOS" to "Other" for the disk drive access.

The system does see the memory when it is installed. On restart I do have to press F1 to accept the new settings.

When looking at free for memory utilization, I don't see the expanded/extended memory or larger buffers that I would expect.

Where do I look to see that the system is utilizting the additional memory?
How do I change the swap partition to accomodate the new memory with out rebuilding the OS from the distrobution.

uname -r = 2.4.19-4GB
fdisk /dev/hda - p = 204088 blocks
filesystem is riserfs