Hi,
Congratz for learning to compile the kernel. That'll make things easier.
BUT, you seem to have missed some more posts.
Héhé.
No prob, you've just answered my question...
Ok, download this:
http://laika.g.la/dropbox/1g_lowmem1_i386.diff

You mentioned a how-to... Apply what it says.
If that doesn't work/ Or you don't understand what to do, tell me about it.

Remember to check the 1G Lowmem option in kconfig, gconfig or whatever you use.

PS: Himem is EVIL

Basically it creates overhead. (Meaning that the time the system takes to manage the memory increases)

Well the problem is, after modifying the EXTRAVERSION in the Makefile it skips to "make menuconfig" then the "how to" simply states: "this is when you apply patches- if your brave" and then skips to the next step of kernel compilation and does not have instructions on patching it.

I assume you patch b4 "make menuconfig" so that you can select the option in menuconfig.....
I assume Ill need 2 things then:
1- info on what needs modification in the patch to match my kernel
2- syntax to apply the patch

I have tried a few different searches on patching but have yet to find an adequate source to explain what I need to do- yet.

If your desire is to have your system recognize 1G of RAM, you might just consider enabling high mem during the kernel recompile. Why make things more difficult than they need to be?

This Gentoo forum post does a great job explaining some basic facts about Linux memory management, and acknowledges that while there "theoretically" may be some additional overhead using high mem, "there is no practical difference". Good luck with it -- J.W.

Ok,
JW has a point, but Hey, rooting out this (theorical) source of overhead is always good.
And if you've already compiled the kernel, patching should be so, so easy.
Why not do it... If it's so easy(And there's no downside).

To patch the kernel' source:
While in the kernel's source directory.

Let me explain:
-"patch" is the basic patching program.
-"-p[NUM]" is an option to determine the path(Basically).
Why do we need this? Well the path of the file requiring updating in the patch is: "linux-2.6.10-ck7/arch/i386/Kconfig", but you don't use version "linux-2.6.10-ck7", so we skip that part so the path becomes "arch/i386/Kconfig". (That's why you need to be already in the kernelsrc dir)
-"< 1g_lowmem1_i386.diff" is just the passing of the file to the patch utility.

thanks lokee, iit would have been nice if JW had read the thread instead of the last post...

while marginal overhead may be the norm, it is not the case in my situation

Simple installs of several current distros taking 1-3 hours instead of 15 minutes, and OS boot times of up to 1 hour instead of 2 minutes, 20 seconds to bring up a console window in OS, these are much more than marginal overhead.

At this point using the lomem only kernel will be just fine for my purposes as the OS runs fine albeit at the loss of some top end ram Ill rarely ever touch, on the other hand Ive come this far, in the sake of learning I might as well go all the way and try out the patch.

Lokee Im still curious as to what changes I need to make in the patch to reflect my kernel/distro?

Nothing, it's been taken care of. Just execute the command I gave you in the last post:
And voila!