[ipxe-devel] 486 with a Realtek 8139

[Nikolai Zhubr]

Hi Geert,

08.05.2021 9:45, Geert Stappers:
[...]
>> What I've done is using prot_to_real implementation in current iPXE, I tried
>> to mimic it as much as possible in respective place in Etherboot.
>
> "in Etherboot", so not in iPXE.

Yes. And it is for a reason. Etherboot has been serving me for years as 
a workhorse, on a daily basis, on a lot of computers. And iPXE has not 
yet (and honestly I was not even aware of its existence until some few 
days ago) and testing it failed somewhat, due to a number of (non-fatal) 
problems discussed earlier.

> Any chance in dumping somewhere
> a rough / rude version of the made changes?

No worries, it is basically a 5-liner, and I don't hide my bugfixes. 
Please see a diff file attached, but I think I'll fork a github repo to 
make it easier searchable and browsable. (I could also create a PR 
though it is unlikely going to be applied to a discontinued tree anyway)

> Same request in other words:
> Relief yourself from any quality demand and share you iPXE i80486 version.[1]

As you might remember I reported that my attempts to run iPXE on real 
hardware failed more or less, although I've got an impression that with 
some effort it should be possible. Meanwhile, if you are willing to take 
the burden of preparing and submitting some 486-compatability patches 
upstream, you can use replies from Michael and Martin earlier in this 
thread as a source, and I'll appreciate that. My understanding is that 
iPXE does not suffer the peculiar problem I've just fixed in etherboot 
(in the attached diff), but simply employs some 586+ features in a 
couple of places. Probably I'll plan to test it eventually, as time 
permits, however funny thing is, I can not see any hardware 
target/compatability statement neither at ipxe.org nor in the source 
tree, which is a bit discouraging.


Thank you,

Regards,
Nikolai
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