Re: Problems with etherboot and Boot prompt.

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

>Cycling through cards would be a nice thing to do but not critical.  I just
>need the one I want to work that is connected to a bootp server.  It would 
>be a cool thing to do but not critical since I would also need to do the 
>same thing in the FreeBSD code (I tried this and it was not trivial).  
>So in FreeBSD I added code to add "BOOTP_WIRED_TO=fxp0" in the kernel config
>for bootp.  This way it will use the card I want.  I may add a similar
>thing to the etherboot stuff to add a define to select which probed card,
>however, I think this is fairly rare.  I think cycling through cards
>may be bad idea in some cases.

Actually I have thought about this a bit, the problem of booting
from multiple cards. My feeling is that the principle of "truth in
configuration" should apply. The ROM should boot the card that it
is installed on. Otherwise you get anomalies when you add or remove
cards. This should be possible to discover by saving the address that
the ROM resides at before the body of the Etherboot code is called and
then comparing what is returned by the PCI probe.

>| Your welcome anytime for advice - especially as you're using etherboot in a
>| production environment ( Ken we bow to you :-)

No, you are the brave ones. I just use Etherboot for fun at home. You
guys have your jobs on the line. That's why user contributions are
very welcome. I still have to set up my PCI machine to write a Tulip
driver. Anybody know where I can buy some spare time? :-)

>Thanks, the code has definitely evolved and has some interesting features
>over the FreeBSD start.  Another thing I'll be looking at is the 
>serial support.  I modified the FreeBSD netboot code to use the VGA/keyboard
>and the serial port as consoles at the same time.  This way you can 
>control the boot code at the machine or remotely (or under program control)
>via the serial port.  It looks the code is currently either or, not both.
>
>So more patches will be in the works.

I look forward to them!

	Cheers, Ken