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Re: bootprom for intel etherexpress PCI100+



Hello,

markus@infoscape.com wrote:
>  > Intel has told me that the Pro100B uses the N28F001BX (128K x 8) in a PLCC
>                                                ^^^^^^^^^
> This should probably read 28F010

I guess, he is correct, the 28F001BX is a boot block flash memory, while the
28F010 is a first generation bulk erase flash rom. You can find the datasheet
for the 28F001BX on intels web server (design/flcomp/datashts/290406.htm).

The only problem in programming the 28F001BX is to know how to apply the
programming voltage to the chip (which is why I'm using the AMD flash eproms
with my designs - they don't use a separate programming voltage). There has
to be some kind of mechanism on the etherexpress board to apply this voltage,
probably some kind of register.

Intel provides a program called EF32 which contains flash memory images
and a program to write an image into the flash EPROM (called FLRESTOR, the
complete archive is in
ftp://download.intel.nl/enduser_reseller/tokenexpress_adapters/EF32.EXE).
The flash images contain a boot block for the 28F001BX, a Novell bootrom
and a program called FlashSet. This FlashSet is executable under DOS and
gets loaded with FLRESTOR when called without any arguments. It cares for
configuring the adapter for flash EPROM usage. According to the documen-
tation FLRESTOR /ERASE or FLRESTOR /NEW should simply program the selected
flash image into the EPROM. However, I can only guess since I don't have
an etherexpress card. Maybe someone who has such an adapter can play a
little bit with these programs. You could try to simply replace one of
the provided flash images with a properly generated netboot image (after
blowing it up to 256kB with 0xFF).

gero.

-- 
The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand
what he finds.			- Claude Bernard
--
Gero Kuhlmann, Hannover     0511/6497525 (Voice)        gero@gkminix.han.de



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