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

[Quinn Plattel]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 3:09 PM Geert Stappers <
geert.stappers at hendrikx-itc.nl> wrote:

> On 15-03-2019 14:50, Quinn Plattel wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 12:28 AM Michael Brown <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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>


Well, I have now tested the same two cards with the same two roms on a
different older system.  Here is the results:

D-Link DFE-530TX:
============================
iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:10.0 D400 PCI2.10 PnP D400

iPXE (PCI 00:10.0) starting execution...ok
iPXE initialising devices...ok

iPXE 1.0.0+ (b6ffe) -- Open Source Network Boot Firmware - http://ipxe.org
Features: DNS HTTP TFTP ELF MBOOT PXE bzImage Menu PXEXT

iPXE>
=============================

3Com 905B:
=============================
iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:10.0 D400 PCI2.10 PnP D400

iPXE (PCI 00:10.0) starting execution...1B101B10 000D4CF4 00000712
Installation failed - cannot continue
=============================

So, results are the same, except, on this older system, I do not seem to
see any addresses advertised in the banner part of the roms.
Why is that?

Quinn
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