Re: Expanding Etherboot RAM window.

[Ken Yap <ken@nlc.net.au>]

>Hi All...
>
>I'm working with Etherboot 4.2.3 and the RealTek 8139 driver.  The buffers
>used in that driver are so large that I'm overwriting the stack (I think)
>and causing all sorts of erratic behavior (mostly spontaneous reboots).  I
>can't seem to figure out how to increase the RAM window that etherboot uses
>from 32K to 64K.  I tried changing the RELOC address from 0x98000 to 0x96000
>but all I get this is an immediate reboot upon executing Etherboot....

I don't think you can. Etherboot has only the 32k from 0x98000 to 0x9ffff
to work with. Certainly you cannot increase the window to 64k because
Linux has stuff starting at 0x90000. What you should do is probably
reduce the number of buffers.  All the protocols used are UDP based
there is no need for stream buffering, only to cover the latency of the
code in responding to incoming packets. In practice, 2-3 ethernet packet
buffers should be sufficient.  Also the poll code should reject packets
as soon as it determines they are not of interest, e.g. packets from self,
broadcast packets of no concern.

Please send me your patches when you get it to work, thanks.
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