Re: [Etherboot-developers] DHCP option 175

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

>So in summary I think the PCIID->kernel module mapping is much more
>of a constant setup situation than sending etherboot driver names.  
>In particular you don't even have care about what etherboot will
>support you just have to worry about what you can support.

I'm in favour of Eric's scheme. There are some NICs that are supported
by two drivers, e.g. the 3c900s are supported by the 595 driver and the
90x driver, in different modes. PCI IDs can also tell you something
about the media supported, e.g. the e1000 series. Late binding gives you
the flexibility to do something different on the server side. If you
decide on the driver ahead of time, you've lost that information. The
general princple is that code in *ROMs is harder to update than code in
servers.

How about this standard for the NIC tag?

	"PCI" or "ISA" (3 bytes)
	Vendor ID (2 bytes network order)
	Device ID (2 bytes network order)

Length 8 bytes, including tag.