Re: Failure to find EPROM on NIC

[markus@infoscape.com]

netsol,matthew writes:
 > I burned the freebsd 16k rom binary into the chip and run rom-scan,
 > surprisingly rom-scan will detect nothing.
 > Have you guys tried successfully either netboot ne2000 rom or the freebsd
 > ne2000 rom by burning it into  a EPROM on NIC.
 > 
 > My origial EPROM chip is bought from Novell, whitch has netware's RPL
 > binary in there.  I erased it and burned in netboot binary.  The original
 > Novell RPL EPROM is seen by my PC, since I burned in other roms, PC just
 > don't see any thing.  Maybe I should keep a copy of the erased Novell RPL
 > binary.

I guess, you already tested all of the obvious problems:

  - EPROM chip works fine and can be read by EPROM burner

  - EPROM chip is seated correctly

  - the very same chip still works correctly, if the original image is 
    burned into it.

  - you verified that this is actually a 27128 and that the NIC is
    configured for a 27128.

If all of this works fine, then I can only suggest that you use a
debugger to take a look at whatever memory location you expect the ROM 
to reside. DOS's debug command will work just fine. Ideally, rom-scan
should be able to find at least something, but your case seems to be
different. If you figure out, what is wrong, please let me know, so
that I can extend rom-scan.

BTW, there is rumor of some NIC's that do not make the entire ROM
accessible. They seem to hardcode some of the address space with a
pattern that their driver software tests in order to see if the card
is present. You might have stumbled over one of those cards. If this
is truly the case, then it should be very easy to spot with a
debugger.


Markus

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Markus Gutschke                         Internet: markus@infoscape.com
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