Re: Failure to find EPROM on NIC

[markus@infoscape.com]

netsol,matthew writes:
 > I ran the rom-scan at dos, it says:
 > 	Found ROM header at C800:0000; anounces 32k image (27c256 EPROM)

This message would suggest, that you properly installed and configured 
the EPROM. I just double-checked with the source code for rom-scan and 
I could not think of any hardware problem that might still go
undetected (please, correct me, if anyone can think of anything else
that rom-scan should check for).

This is a list of other things, that I can imagine as having an effect 
on how your machine detects ROM extensions:

  1) there are other ROM extensions that take effect earlier and
     override whatever the BOOT-Prom is trying to do. A typical
     candidate for this, would be a SCSI host adapter; but if there is 
     one, you should see it in the rom-scan output.

  2) your computer has problems with the way that the BOOT-Prom is
     hooking into system vectors. If you are using "etherboot", you
     could try defining NOINT19H in the configuration file and then
     rebuilding the boot image. While this change introduces a couple
     of other problems and is thus not generally recommended, it might
     help in your case --- if it does help, then please check that
     afterwards, the machine is running at full speed and that you can
     access all PCI devices; there are BIOS versions out there, which
     do not fully initialize the hardware if NOINT19H is set.

  3) just to make sure, that you are not seeing a problem with weird
     PC motherboard design, you should also try moving the EPROM base
     address to some higher location (e.g. D800:0000).

  4) can you please confirm, that the above line is the *only* output
     you get from rom-scan. Can you repeatedly run rom-scan and still
     see the same message? If it does not work all the time, your
     EPROM might have an access time that is too long; it should
     probably have something around 120ns.

  5) check your system BIOS if it has any switches that might enable
     ROM extensions, caching for ROM extensions, shadowing, or any
     such thing. Play around with these options.

  6) if none of the above helps, try posting as much information as
     possible about your machine. Maybe, someone else has a good idea
     when he sees a summary of your configuration.

Good luck,


Markus

-- 
Markus Gutschke                         Internet: markus@infoscape.com
Infoscape, Inc                          Phone:    +1-415-537-3778
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San Francisco, CA 94105

Disclaimer: The above message represents my personal opinion; It does
            not constitute an offical statement by Infoscape!

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