[ipxe-devel] BCM5751M Question

[Robin Smidsrød]

On 2011-09-17 09:18, Wes Frazier wrote:
> I have a BCM5751M NIC in a Thinkpad I would like to flash w/ iPXE. My
> understanding is that it will likely work with the tg3 driver once I add
> the PCI ID (as per the old gPXE mailing list here:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/gpxe@etherboot.org/msg01194.html )

I'd just like to remind you that the tg3 driver is really, really, slow.
I have one in my laptop HP Compaq 6730b, and anything except UNDI
chainloading is a really slow experience. I might remember wrong, but I
benchmarked it to something like 2-3MB/s with UNDI and something like
30-50KB/s with tg3 native driver. If possible, I'd suggest updating the
ROM on your BCM5751M to the latest Broadcom PXE ROM and chainloading
undionly.kpxe.

>From what I remember, someone suggested doing a tg3 rewrite for the gPXE
GSoC 2011, but I'm not sure if that project was completed or not. If it
was, we should probably try to merge that new driver into iPXE (not
something I know how to do, though).

-- Robin