[ipxe-devel] 486 with a Realtek 8139

[Nikolai Zhubr]

Hi Michael,

12.05.2021 13:12, Michael Brown:
[...]
>> With those changes, there would be no need for any compile-time option
>> or accompanying documentation: the code would Just Work on a 486.
>
> All three of the above are now implemented:
>
> https://github.com/ipxe/ipxe/commit/13c1abe10
> https://github.com/ipxe/ipxe/commit/05fcf1a2f
> https://github.com/ipxe/ipxe/commit/a6a8bb1a9
>
> With the current master branch, I am able to boot successfully using
> iPXE on a (bochs-emulated) 486.

An attempt to chainload iPXE compiled as 10ec8139.kpxe using Etherboot 
as a primary loader, resulted in last message displayed
"633kB free base memory after PXE unload"
then nothing (and Caps Lock not working)

Just to be sure, immediately replacing "10ec8139.kpxe" with "pxelinux.0" 
in my DHCP server settings and restarting it results in pxelinux's menu 
successfully appering so I know the environment is most probably OK.

One note is that I had to compile using the default ancient system gcc 
compiler with:
"make -j1 bin/10ec8139.kpxe EMBED=chain.ipxe"
where gcc says:
gcc (SUSE Linux) 4.8.3

An attempt to cross-compile using my preferred 486 toolchain with gcc 
7.5 fails because DEPS start going circles forever. For that attempt, I 
used:
"make -j1 CROSS_COMPILE=... ARCH=x86 bin/10ec8139.kpxe EMBED=chain.ipxe"

Usually, the command line like above works fine.

Not sure if I did something obviously stupid because documentation is 
pretty much non-existent.

A side note is the size of 10ec8139.rom is almost 70kb, which somewhat 
beyond the capacity of even the largest ROM chip that Realtek 8139 can 
be equipped with.


Thank you,

Regards,
Nikolai

>
> Michael
>