Re: Using Netboot with PCI NE2000 compatible card

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

At 10:03 AM 9/2/97 GMT, gero@gkminix.han.de (Gero Kuhlmann) wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Mike Hammer <mike-hammer@usa.net> wrote:
>> 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.
>
>What is the problem? I would rather be interested to know more about why
>this vendor provided packet driver doesn't work. Usually those vendor-
>provided drivers work much better than the Crynwr drivers.
>
Hello,

Well, while back i posted about this incompatibility i was having
with vendor provided packet driver.  The vendor is Realtek from
Taiwan and they make the Plug-and-Play NE2000 register compatible
LAN IC's for ISA and PCI.  They are very popular in embedded market.

Anyways, the problem i'm having is, i get the following error
message from netboot:

"PKTDRV ERROR: Invalid PKTDRVR".

>From the response i got from you, it seems the vendor is not
returning the correct value for function 10h.  I'm going to
send you their packet driver for reference.  I prefer to use
their packet driver for one thing, it has auto-probe feature
for detecting their chip so i don't have to worry about knowing
the i/o base address nor interrupt resource being used.

PS.  Do you know if etherboot also uses the approach of using
     plug-in packet drivers to interface with various Ethernet
     boards?  This method seems to be the best as far as supporting
     all those network cards in the market.

Thank you very much,

-gshin