Using Netboot with PCI NE2000 compatible card

[Mike Hammer <mike-hammer@usa.net>]

Hello,

Recently i've switched from my ISA NE2000 compatible card
to PCI NE2000 card sorely due to a special need.  Couple new
things come to mind when one starts using PCI based card in
PC and i wanted to know if current version of Netboot (0.7.2)
supports working off from PCI based NE2000 compatible card.

First off, due to the nature of plug-n-play at the i/o base
address and interrupt level, probably using the vendor provided
packet driver is a better way to go here.  However i seem to
be having some problem with the vendor provided packet driver
for this Realtek 8029 PCI NE2000 compatible card working with
Netboot.  So i try to fall back into the NE2000 compatible
packet driver provided by Netboot.  This implies that i need
to provide during build of boot prom kernel the i/o base address
of the PCI network card as well as the interrupt level being
used.  To get these informations, i used the setup utility
program that came with the card and noticed that the i/o base
address was set to 0x6100 and the interrupt at 11.

Will Netboot be able to use these settings especially the high
i/o base address?  I noticed from the history file that since
June 05, 1997, Netboot will go as high as 0x7FFF to allow for
PCI network card i/o address.  Does 16 bit i/o addressing only
allows for 12 bit resolution?  If so, accessing 0x6100 shouldn't
be a problem?  As for the interrupt at 11, i wouldn't think
this would be a problem.

Finally, this is probably more to do at the system level then
at Neboot, and that is dealing with the boot prom's physical
base address.  At the ISA card, i would normally set the kernel
base addres to C800:0000H, but in PCI, again due to the nature
of plug-n-play, the code base address isn't really configurable.

I would appreciate it very much on any feedback from others
who have dealt with PCI based NE2000 compatible network cards.

In the similar note, plug-n-play would also effect those ISA
network cards, such as 3Com's 509 network card.  What about
under this situation?

Thank you very much,

-gshin