[vortex] 3c905c ROM enable/disable

[Rudy Zijlstra]

Hmmm,

I've not been playing with network booting lately, but I remember that the
code contained in the boot rom on an ethernet card would get executed whether
the mainboard supported network boot or not. Actually, I do not think that
the mainboard network boot makes use of the NIC boot rom. They are just two
different solutions for the same problem.

Thoses NIC boot roms existed long before mainboards started supporting
network boot.

Just my 2c.

Rudy

Bogdan Costescu wrote:

> On 8 Nov 2000 sacrificial-spam-address@horizon.com wrote:
>
> > 3com supply a DOS utility to adjust (some of) "the" EEPROM settings.
> > One of the settings disables the boot ROM, so the BIOS doesn't see it.
>
> As I wrote in my previous message, if BIOS doesn't even look for the boot
> ROM, it doesn't matter if it's enabled or not and what its content is, so
> you don't need to disable it.
> Now the question is: are there BIOS-es that can boot off network (so they
> try to execute boot ROM code) and do not provide a way to disable this ?
> Only if this is true, disabling boot ROM is the only way to avoid BIOS to
> try to boot off it.
>
> > This speeds up booting, because it doesn't display a message and wait
> > for a timeout.
>
> Absolutely true. That's why I turn off network booting in BIOS.
>
> > I thought the analysis might be worth sharing.
>
> It is! Just that the whole analysis probably took you a lot of time, while
> changing the boot sequence is a 30 seconds job 8-)
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Bogdan Costescu
>
> IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
> Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
> Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
> E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De
>
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