🚀 go-pugleaf

ken@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (Ken Yap) writes:

>|Hello,
>|
>|I am interested in booting some linux machines as diskless clients
>|from a server machine. I currently have a variety of ether cards in
>|these machines, mostly ne2000 clones or 3COM cards. These all have
>|empty eeprom sockets.
>|
>|I seem to remember reading somewhere that someone was working on some
>|code I could blow into ROM and put in the cards to do this. I have no
>|idea where to look to try and find this work. Can anyone help with any
>|pointers?

>Hi, look for etherboot-1.1 at all good Linux archives.

I recall somebody e-mailing me, who had burned a few ROMS, but found that
the code wasn't executed by the host BIOS. The same code on a floppy worked
fine, and they couldn't figure it out. They checked with DOS debug and
the ROM code appeared where it should, and also had the 0x55 0xAA signature,
but still no-go.

Since I can't recall who it was, and since I think I have found a possible
reason for the above, I'll mention it here. According to a Nat Semic.
application note for a ne2000 clone, they state that the following check 
can be used to verify a ROMs content is valid. The PC BIOS may be doing 
this same check (which fails) and hence it ignores the ether-ROM.

	If a boot ROM has been identified as belonging to the adapter
	undergoing diagnostics, then it is possible to check that its
	data has not been corrupted. The sum of all the ROM bytes should
	equal zero. The size of the ROM (in 1/2k segments) is held at
	byte offset 0x03, and offsets 0x00 and 0x01 should hold values
	0x55 and 0xaa respectively.

Maybe the above tidbit will help somebody. The etherboot ROM images
may not be storing their size at 0x03 and checksumming to zero.

Paul.