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

[Michael Brown]

On 17/03/2019 01:09, Quinn Plattel wrote:
> 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?

Your older system does not support PMM.  iPXE will read the ROM image 
directly from the BIOS option ROM area (and will therefore require more 
option ROM space than if PMM were present), and will use 0x100000 as the 
temporary decompression area.

It looks as though your 3c905b is experiencing a genuine CRC32 checksum 
failure when reading the ROM image, i.e. the image as read back from the 
expansion ROM is corrupted.

Michael