Re: [Etherboot-developers] pxe and lilo prefix on i386

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

>But I agree to your other mail that we should only have one rom for e=
>very=20
>vendor/device id combination. Probably somebody should check wether I=
> moved=20
>the right rom names to the .c files before deleting the remaining NIC=
>=20
>entries.

Say a NIC manufacturer is the first to use a particular controller chip,
using a PCI ID tuple. The particular combination gets named by that
model. Later the chip is sold to other manufacturers and they continue
to use the same ID tuple. NIC used to handle this by aliases. Ideally
Etherboot should only care about PCI IDs and not the name, but people
are used to asking for binaries by name. But there should be only one
Etherboot name for that tuple. If it happens to be the first
manufacturer's model name, well they get the glory.

I know Marty will hate me for this, but maybe the alias information
should be maintained by rom-o-matic (and/or maybe the NIC DB) since it's
there that most people look for a matching entry. Maybe a query box
where people type in free-format and it comes up with a suggestion. It
would also help people who ask about rtl8019 for example. From there it
would take the user back to the generate-a-rom dialogue with the right
entry selected.