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

[Marty C. <md...@th...>]

On 12/5/2001 10:46 AM Ken Yap ke...@us... wrote:
>Marty, I'm sorry, I'll have to strongly disagree with you here. I think
>this cure is worse than the disease. While this is nice for bespoke ROMs
>for NICs, it makes it necessary for the user to find out the MAC
>address, have it put into the ROM, and put the ROM on the right NIC. It
>makes mass programming of ROMs impossible. I know it would do wonders
>for the stock price of rom-o-matic though. :-)

No problem.  It was proposed as an option for cases where people needed 
that fine_grained control over NIC and order of search.  I was thinking 
out loud, and pondering what I'd do if I had to make sure that a 
particular NIC was being used.  

>2. If BOOT_HOST_NIC_ONLY is defined AND if the code was started from
>NIC ROM (as discovered from the ROM address, now you know why loader.S
>saves the ROM segment address early in the game), then send the request
>on only the NIC which holds the ROM.

This is nice for the purposes you outline.  And not too hard to implement.

I understand your position on this, and I enjoyed the thought experiment 
in any case.

I think we should create a contrib/ subdirectory called:

    "crazy_ideas_that_will_never_ever_ever_be_in_the_main_distribution
      _but_hey_if_its_what_you_want_to_do_heres_how" :)

or more succinctly:

     hdkois/   ("hopeless dream keepers of intergalactic space :)

Marty

---
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   Name: Marty Connor
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