Re: Question

[roessner@rbg.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de (Ralph Roessner)]

Hi!

[...]
> 
> The machine I am attempting to boot does in fact work; I can boot it to
> DOS or Linux using only the floppy drive.  Using DOS, I configured a
> (cheap) NIC and used Linux to get the 40-bit ethernet address.  So the
> hardware all seems to work fine.

40 bit? Am I being stupid, or should it be 48? Or is it just a typo?

[...]
> My hub shows that the packets are being sent by both machines properly.
> The problem seems to be in receiving it on the diskless side.

Well, some packets are sent properly.
> 
> So I'm curious.  Am I just paying the price for not buying a better NIC?
> Is there a workaround or better approach I should try?  Is there a
> newer version of the code I should be looking at?  The ethernet card is
> supposed to be NE2000 compatible, and is a simple jumperless ISA 
> combo card.

In my limited experience the chance of netbooting a NIC
decreases when its price increases. We do fine with some NE2000
clones.

Have you tried running bootpd with debug levels (possibly in
standalone mode) to see what it really thinks about the packets your
NIC sends?

Sorry, this is all info I can think of at the moment. Hope it helps.

Regards,
   Ralph

-- 
   Ralph Roessner  (R"o"sner)                  TU Darmstadt
   Raum 38/B008                                FB Informatik
   EMail: roessner@rbg.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de