Re: Netboot with large packet driver (RTL8139)

[Thomas Wuensche <wuensche@ems-wuensche.com>]

Unfortunately I did not have the time to follow this
issue for the last time. However I would be interested
in any results.

As far as I understood, the 8029 and the 8139 are
significantly different chips, no backward compatibility.

I was told by the author of etherboot, that it would
not work with this chip and was pointed to netboot.

Thanks,

Thomas Wuensche

Mike Hammer wrote:
> 
> >Hello NETBOOTers,
> >
> >I want to boot some diskless clients with Longshine
> >network cards (Realtek RTL8139 chip). After a first
> >look at etherboot Markus Gutschke pointed me to
> >netboot and the use of a packet driver.
> >
> >Realtek (www.realtek.com.tw) supplies a packet driver,
> >but this one unfortunately has a size of 56k. Combined
> >with the netboot part this is more than 64k and thus
> >will not work in the netboot standard setup.
> >
> >Can anybody on this list suggest a solution?
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >Thomas Wuensche
> >
> I'm currently trying to get 8139 to work with either Etherboot
> and/or Netboot.  Have you tried using the latest Etherboot?
> I was able to get Etherboot to work with Realtek's 8029 which
> is one of their NE2000 PCI clone chip.
> 
> I would think that 8139 chip registers be backward compatible with
> 8029 except for controlling the 100Mbps link speed.  If so i think
> Etherboot should work with 8029.
> 
> As for Netboot, are you using the version 0.8.1?  I think version
> 0.8.1 supports larger packet driver binary size.  I would think
> that since Netboot compresses the PROM code, i think with the
> kind of compression that Netboot provides hopefully the packet driver
> compressed can fit with rest of things in a 32KB or 64KB PROM space.
> 
> Maybe the network card that you have doesn't support 64KB PROM
> size?  Have you tried using 64KB PROM?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -mh
> 
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