Re: [Etherboot-developers] Question on supporting nVidia .o driver

[Michael B. <mb...@fe...>]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Peter Lister wrote:
> > 1. The nVidia .o file is 20kB in size - around 4-5 times the size of most
> >    of the Etherboot drivers.  This might be enough to prevent it working
> >    in 5.0.x (AFAICT, the memory-map changes in the 5.1.x branch will fix
> >    this anyway).
> I can image that much of the nvnet.o might be bloat from Etherboot's
> POV, but as you say EB can hopefully cope.

For the sake of the sanity of anyone who tries to develop this driver:
>=20kB of driver code is almost certainly enough to make Etherboot 5.0.x
simply die without warning at seemingly random points.  I say this on the
basis that 17kB of driver code (prism2_pci, prism2_plx and rtl8139 in the
same build) produces these effects.  This is due to the memory model in
Etherboot 5.0.x.

I would strongly recommend that anyone attempting to write this driver
ignores the 5.0.x tree and works only on 5.1.x with the new memory
architecture.

*** DO NOT TRY TO GET THIS DRIVER TO WORK WITH ETHERBOOT 5.0.x ***

Hopefully that might save someone a few days of pointless head-banging.
:-)

Michael Brown