Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 12:57:47 +0000 (GMT) From: Andrew Gordon <arg-bsd@arg1.demon.co.uk> To: Michael Smith <msmith@freebsd.org> Cc: <freebsd-current@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: "Current & Etherboot" Message-ID: <20020123125010.T7078-100000@server.arg.sj.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <200201222258.g0MMw3d02861@mass.dis.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Michael Smith wrote: > > But well, there are only two NICs that support PXE, aren't there? In > > particular, there's nothing cheap (i. e. <= USD 10) you could use in > > conjunction with an old junk ISA NIC people often have in their > > bit-bucket (i. e. with an NE2k clone or 3C509). > > You can't put an ISA NIC into a modern computer. True, but ancient computers can often be given a new lease of life by netbooting (eg. discless X-terminals made out of 486s). > But you can get PXE bootroms for most NICs, including those ISA fossils, > from Bootix. Most modern NICs certainly, but there doesn't appear to be support for PXE on any ISA cards, at least not according to: http://www.bootix.com/us/products/promtypes.shtml > And since the specification is open, you could always simply fix > etherboot to provide the PXE interface and then you'd be back in business. I've always assumed that the lack of PXE roms for ISA cards was that the code size is too big to fit in the 16 or 32Kbyte that you get on an ISA card. Of course, the full PXE spec includes lots of stuff that isn't used by FreeBSD's pxeboot, so a subset may be a plausible way to go. Alternatively, adding direct NE2000 support to a version of pxeboot that can be loaded with existing etherboot may be an easier way to go? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020123125010.T7078-100000>