[syslinux] Re: PXE stack on bootrom

Martijn Bakker martijn-syslinux at insecure.nl
Wed Apr 3 17:02:44 PST 2002


On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 04:51:44PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> There is a spec, and my understanding is that it is based at least in
> part on the NDIS 2.0 specification, so it *MIGHT* be possible to create
> a generic kit that uses an NDIS 2 driver.  Otherwise using a modified
> Etherboot or Netboot would be a sensible option.

I was already thinking about the last option. It's cheaper. The code can give
implementation ideas, at least, so I'm going to look at it anyway.

> The ROMs are just i386 machine code, typically, with a special (not
> particularly complicated) header.  A lot of them are written with a
> compressed header in order to get more code.  The PXE stack is
> invariably loaded into the high end of conventional (lower 640K) memory,
>  although it frequently is at least partially written in protected-mode
> code (there is a 32-bit PM entry point, which you must be able to handle.)

sounds like a doable thing. I'll try and get into it as soon as it's weekend.

btw, a really stupid question, that probably has the answer under the first
result in google, but I have this 3c905c, and it has 2 modes for booting from
the net: "dhcp/bootp + tftp" and "PXE". as it seems, they do the same. Am I
crazy ?

grtz, Tijn

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