[ipxe-devel] "Installation failed" on 3Com 905B cards

[Geert Stappers]

On 15-03-2019 14:50, Quinn Plattel wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 12:28 AM Michael Brown <mcb30 at ipxe.org
> <mailto:mcb30 at ipxe.org>> wrote:
>
>     On 13/03/2019 17:26, Quinn Plattel wrote:
>     > Thanks for the quick response.  Here is the banner message:
>     >
>     > iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 04:04.0 6800 PCI3.00 PnP
>     PMM+00106D80+00000000 CE00
>     > Press Ctrl-B to configure iPXE (PCI 04:04.0)...
>
>     Thanks; that explains the root cause of the problem.
>
>     The BIOS is allocating a PMM block at 0x106d80 to hold a copy of
>     the raw
>     ROM image, but failing the second PMM allocation for the temporary
>     decompression area.
>
>     The default temporary decompression area used by iPXE if PMM
>     allocation
>     fails is at 0x100000 (i.e. the start of high memory).  The
>     decompressed
>     ROM image is therefore overwriting the copy of the raw ROM image,
>     which
>     leads to the CRC32 checksum failure.
>
>     What banner line did you get on this system with the (working)
>     DFE-530TX?
>
>
> I did another type of test now:
>
> I disabled AUTOBOOT_ROM_FILTER in config/general.h and recompiled the
> 905b rom file.
> I then flashed it to the 29C512 chip but this time I installed this
> chip into the DFE-530TX D-Link card.  I put both cards into the same
> machine with the 3com card installed without a bootrom chip.  When I
> started the machine, the 3com code in the d-link card executed
> successfully this time and found the 3Com pci card and did a
> successful dhcp connection.  Interestingly both roms report 00000000
> on the second address of there banner pages.
>
I wouldn't be surprised if we are dealing with flacky BIOS.

Testing the NIC in a totaly different computer could confirm that gut
feeling.


Cheers

Geert Stappers

DevOps Engineer at Hendrikx ITC

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