Need boot ROM for Asus A7M266-D motherboard

[Bob Drzyzgula]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 01:08:13PM -0800, Tom Bartol wrote:
> 
> I am assuming that this part will come as a blank ROM and that we would
> have to flash it with the appropriate boot code.  We're pretty computer
> savvy but have never programmed or flashed our own chips.  Several
> questions now arise:
>   1) Is there a vendor that supplies these ROMs already flashed with PXE
>      boot or other suitable boot code (e.g Etherboot).

You may not want this even if they are available.
A lot of the configurability of etherboot happens
at build time.

>   2) if not then I assume we'd have to obtain necessary hardware and
>      software to flash our own chips.  Can you recommend to us the
>      hardware and software for this process?  I've found some information
>      on this at the Etherboot web site but your specific recommendations
>      for the 3C920 and Atmel AT29c010 128Kx8 would be most welcome.

I know that (at least some of) the 3c905 cards can flash
the EEPROM themselves, see the 3c90x.txt file in the
etherboot source code. In the etherboot contrib directory,
there's a linux-based utility to do this.  The onboard
3c920 may or may not be able to do this, but if not, and
the sockets for the two boards are the same (does the
3c920 card from ASUS have a normal DIP socket? I can't
tell from the blurry picture on ASUS's website) you
might be able to use a real 3c905 card to burn the EEPROM,
and then transfer it over.

Alternatively, you can get an EEPROM burner device yourself.
Probably the gold standard is DataIO [1, the "chipwriter"
would probably be sufficient], but those are expensive
and require maintenance contracts to obtain algorithm
updates. Many people have good luck with the Nedhams [2]
devices, e.g. the EMP-10. I use a Hi-Lo systems All-11P2
from Tribal Micro [3], which works well, although it's
overkill for this task and the software is a bit lame. Most
commercial device programmers require a Windows system to
operate. :-(

[1] http://www.dataio.com/
[2] http://www.needhams.com/
[3] http://www.tribalmicro.com/

>   3) Etherboot doesn't specifically mention support for the 3C920.  This
>      would most likely mean making some (hopefully small) modifications to
>      one of the 3C90x drivers in Etherboot.  But making these mods would
>      require detailed manuals of the 3C920.  Do you think 3Com would supply
>      us with the necessary info and technical support?

If no one here knows, I'd highly recommend asking
on the etherboot list -- someone may have already done
the work.

--Bob