[NBLUG/talk] Memory

[Micxz]

I've had a 512MB RAM chip in a computer I bought about 6 months ago. 
Last week after my machine slowed down extremely. I checked the RAM, it 
only showed 90MB in the Bios and the command "free" confirmed this. So 
thinking the RAM was somehow defective (very rare I was told later). I 
called the place I got the computer and they told me to sent that RAM 
chip in for testing. I bought another 512MB chip to fill the gap because 
I have to have the network up here.

  Old chip: bios says "90MB" & free says "90MB" (I sent this one back 
for testing)

  The new RAM chip has arrived in the mail and now is installed:

  New chip: bios says "480MB" & free says "128MB"

  (note 480MB is correct because I have onboard video that consumes the 
rest)

  micxz at neptune:~> free -b
  total used free shared buffers cached
  Mem: 128618496 124313600 4304896 0 21475328 44568576
  -/+ buffers/cache: 58269696 70348800
  Swap: 986992640 56631296 930361344

I tried to build a command to get my own reading:

  a=`ls -la /proc/kcore | awk '{print $5}' | tr -d ''`;echo 
$(($a/1024/1024));

it gives me "128".

So things are feeling way faster now. But should I listen to the bios or 
linux (free)? I like to think I have 512MB RAM lol. What commands and/or 
apps are there to really confirm this?

I tried to search for this on the list archives but the search function 
is still broken.

Thanks'
Micxz