Re: [Etherboot-users] Problems with Matsonic MS8127C+.

[<ebi...@ln...>]

"Jorge L. deLyra" <de...@la...> writes:

> Has anybody had the following problem with the Matsonic MS8127C+ mainboard
> for the Athlon K7 (Thunderbird) 1.2 GHz Socket-A CPU:
> 
> I am unable to make the mainboard boot from the boot prom chip. The floppy
> boots and works OK, but the boot chip on the network card seem to simply
> be ignored by the bios. Well, at least there are no visible messages on
> the screen but the standard "DISK BOOT FAILURE..." message from the bios.
> I have an older version of Etherboot (4.6) in the boot chip, but since it
> doesn't seem to even get loaded, I guess it doesn't matter...

It does matter. If you are doing 4.6 there are deficiencies with how it
is detected by the BIOS as a boot device.  Try 5.0.3.

> The network card is a 3COM 3C905B-TX. The very same card and boot chip
> work OK on other mainboards, for example with the older 800 MHz Slot-A
> Athlon. I tried the bios upgrade we found on the manufacturer's site but
> it didn't help. I still get the standard error message from the bios when
> we try to boot from LAN. I played around with the bios settings but didn't
> find anything helpful...
> 
> Any ideas of what it can be, besides a broken bios?...		Cheers,

Broken etherboot.  I don't think we will be fully compliant until
5.0.4, when we work around an assembler misfeature.  But the only current
brokeness is not letting the boot order get changed.  5.0.3 is much
much better than 4.6 at working with different BIOS's

Eric