Re: Questions on flashing ethernet into AWARD BIOS

[Dirk von Suchodoletz <dirk@goe.net>]

> I am very interested in flashing the etherboot code into the AWARD BIOS
> chip on a GIGABYTE mainboard. But as I can learn from the previous
> discussions, there is a question of local boot, because the BIOS runs
> etherboot code immediately after itself without trying floppy or HDD first.
> In this case, I might have to take a risk of un-bootable if errors happened
> in etherboot codes building. How can I avoid this risk?

Hm, if you want to aviod the risk having a system running immediatly into
etherboot, buy a new flashrom identical to the flash on your board. Boot
the system, hot unplug the original rom, plug the new one and flash it
with the modified code. Reboot and if something nasty happens switch back
to the original chip.

> Another question is about the cheap RealTek RTL8139 chip based NIC. What is
> the clone of the RTL8139, or which driver should be used for it in linux
> kernel? And how about the performance of RTL8139 compared with other 
> 100Mbps cards on linux?

We use the rtl8139 with ca. 100 xterminals or diskless clients without
greater problems. Dont know so much about the performance in comparison to
other cards, but it seems OK. I have problems with etherboot and ps2
mouses when I use the rtl8139 and etherboot. But there are serial mouses
as well :-)

So long,
	   Dirk

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