Re: Problems with etherboot and Boot prompt.

[Doug Ambrisko <ambrisko@whistle.com>]

Charlie Brady writes:
| On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, Heinrich Rebehn wrote:
| > Charlie Brady wrote:
| > > Yes, I have this problem now. DOS boots fine if I select N (normal boot
| > > from HD). Win95 hangs however. I have no idea what is different about the
| > > way that Win95 boots, but there is a difference. Does anyone have any
| > > ideas?
| > > 
| > > I am using the 32bit compile of etherboot-4.0, BTW.
| > 
| > I have a similar problem using a netboot-0-7.3 eprom on a 3c905-TX. DOS
| > and NT boot fine if i choose local boot, but WIN95 hangs for some
| > minutes and then resets the PC. I *think* i have read somewhere that
| > WIN95 doesn't like fully initialized NICs when booting??
| 
| I don't think this can be the answer, at least not for etherboot. I don't
| think that etherboot touches the NIC at all if you choose not to boot from
| the network. I wonder what it is doing in its exit() code that upsets
| Win95. Any other ideas?

I might be able to shed some light on this.  I've been hacking on the
etherboot (ironically) to boot FreeBSD (why? because etherboot support the
Intel 10/100B).  The original FreeBSD code has been fixed so that on exit
of the netboot code Win95/Win98 will boot.  Trying to do the same with
the 3.2 code (ie. exit without booting from the net) would hang win98.
So I've applied changes and I've got that part to work with etherboot
(ie. calling exit from within etherboot make the machine reboot 
and boot win98).  This does not help the case of booting the hard disk
or floppy.  I have been struggling with that and don't understand 
how all of that is supposed to work.  My guesses have failed.  If 
someone has any ideas and can work on the code I will try to separate 
out my patches that fix the exit part and send them.  I can also then 
try to apply them to the 4.0 stuff as well.

So my test case is that I made a win98 boot floppy, copy the etherboot
com file onto it.  Boot the win98 floppy, run etherboot and then 
select the option not to do the netboot.  Then the machine boots the
floppy again.  Without my patches it would hang in the boot of the floppy.

If this is of any help let me know.  I would really like to get the 
boot from hard disk working.  I also fixed a bugs of etherboot
not working with long bootp replies. 

Doug A.