[Etherboot-developers] Re: Via-rhine in etherboot 5.1.1 & misc

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

>I am currently testing PXE & Etherboot related topics and
>I came to notice a bug that could appear in Etherboot under
>some conditions (lot of successive & fast TX) in the via-rhine code.
>Here is the patch I use :
>
>+    /* Before writing in the TX buffs, wait if previous frame was not
>yet flushed */
>+    while (tp->tx_ring[entry].tx_status.bits.own_bit !=0);
>+

The fix is valid, but it's better to do this wait just after sending the
packet. Try putting just before:

	tp->cur_tx++;

this code:

    /* Wait until transmit is finished */
    while (tp->tx_ring[entry].tx_status.bits.own_bit != 0)
        ;

Please test this and let us know if it works. Thanks, it will go into
the next version, which will be 5.0.6.

>As you may be aware of, PXE does not use any particular image format :
>it just
>loads raw binary to 0x7C00 and executes it.
>Unfortunately, the header of NBI images does not allow me to use the
>same file
>for both PXE & Etherboot, but I found it could be interesting to shift
>the NBI
>header by (let's say) 8 bytes, so that I can put a "jmp +512" code in
>the begining
>of my code.

Sorry, I can't do this. It breaks the spec of NBI images. You are free
to hack your copy all you want though.