Re: [Etherboot-developers] Q: Multiple drivers.

[<ke...@us...>]

>1) Is it reasonable for etherboot to support multiple cards,
>   and possible multiple cards with different drivers at
>   one time.

Yes, this is a reasonable thing. In the past when the code was in a ROM,
it would have violated the principle of least surprise for the code on
one NIC's ROM to boot another NIC, but Etherboot has extended its
tentacles into the BIOS and other places now. One thing that would be
nice, if possible, is for the single driver version to by selection or
by default boot only the physical NIC it lives in. That way controlling
the interface is a matter of choosing the right NIC to put the ROM in.

The interface to the drivers is rather poor, it only takes the first NIC
it finds. Ideally it should enumerate all the NICs it can boot and
choose a good default or give the user a choice (one of multiple NICs of
the same or different models).

>2) Would it be reasonable to have a version of the hard/floppy
>   booting code that uses polled ide/floppy drivers instead of
>   the BIOS.

Provided that this is a compile time option, this is ok. I expect that
the code will take up room and ROM users should not have to pay the cost
in ROM space if they are not using the disk access. At the same time,
the API to disk access could probably be improved.

>I have code that implements supports multiple cards with the same
>drive, and polled ide & floppy access, and I'm trying to find
>the best place for it to have a home, be maintained, and be useful.
>
>If it something you don't mind seeing in etherboot then I will look
>into this.  

Sounds great. Any contributions are gratefully received.