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From: Christoph P. <chr...@gm...> - 2002-02-28 22:31:20
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Ok, I will think about writing the HOWTO ... To come back (only for a short hint). You high quality on PCI handling allows using the idea of legacy ROM images. Why ? The answer is simple. When Etherboot starts, it does the whole setup on his own. Setting up and activating PCI devices, searching for the devices, attaching the driver to them and run the boopt/tftp stuff. The PCI/PnP header is only needed (AFAIK, and tests have proven that) that the BIOS following the BBS (BIOS BOOT SPEC) creates an boot entry in a list of bootable devices. Therefore the ROM code is not simple executed, but it is started following the boot order. If the ROM has not a PCI/PnP haeder following BBS, then the ROM code is treated as "normal" ROM extension (maybe something else, than a boot device), an the BIOS has to execute this code anyway, before going to the "boot work". And as mentioned above, etherboot is fully self-contained and can run the code booting an OS, or if the user decides to boot locally (or if something fails) the control is given back to the BIOS and so the BIOS starts it's normal boot process. So the user can really select between two well defined booting methods !! With friendly regard Christoph Plattner Ken Yap wrote: > > >It is paradox. The old BIOS not able to handle PCI/PnP headers, > >have no problems, but the user also misses the feature of a > >define boot order including the net. > >On very new BIOS the problem exists, if the user want to have > >a selection without touching the BIOS setup 9for example > >embedded boards using serial console with a BIOS without serial > >console port ....). > > > >I hope I could explain the problem, I often use the wrong words ... > > I don't think pure PCI BIOSes are even required to pay attention to > legacy ROMs since they don't expect them to be on the bus. So it's > somewhat accidental that you can subvert the PnP mechanism to get the > behaviour you want. > > I would rather that you wrote a small HOWTO, and I will add it to the > contrib/ section. If I make it part of the official config, people will > ask me questions about it and I don't want to spend time finding out > about their strange BIOS situation. If you write the HOWTO, you can > answer the questions. > > _______________________________________________ > Etherboot-developers mailing list > Eth...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/etherboot-developers -- ------------------------------------------------------- private: chr...@gm... company: chr...@al... |
