netboot on IBM Thinkpad A21p

[Sebastian Kirsch]

Hi,

I'm trying to netboot an IBM ThinkPad A21p using grub. (The latest
version 0.5.97 from CVS, though version 0.5.96.1 exhibits the same
symptoms.)

The ThinkPad is supposed to have a Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 minipci
card, and the ethernet card works with the standard Linux eepro100
driver. (Yes, the A21p normally comes with a 3Com card, but this one
has a different configuration.) I compile grub on this system:

pirx:~/src/grub/docs $ uname -a; gcc -v; as --version
Linux pirx 2.2.18 #14 Thu Mar 15 16:04:54 CET 2001 i686 unknown
Reading specs from /opt/gnu/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/2.95.3/specs
gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)
GNU assembler 2.11

grub is configured with --enable-diskless --enable-eepro100. I boot
grub from floppy; ultimately, it's supposed to be booted via tftp, but
the symptoms are the same when booting from floppy and running dhcp by
hand.

When I say 'dhcp' on the grub commandline, it says the following:

---
Found Intel EtherExpressPro100 at 0x1800, ROM address 0x0
Probing...[Intel EtherExpressPro100]Ethernet addr: c0:80:ff:bf:c1:a8
eepro100: Invalid EEPROM checksum 4.4x, check settings before activating this 
device!
eeprom[6] = bfff
---

Note the wrong mac address -- the real mac address is 0:3:47:6d:c2:bf,
and this is, of course, very inconvenient, since that way, I can't use
the same DHCP entry (and, of course, the same IP address) on the BIOS
level and for the grub boot. The ROM address looks peculiar, too;
--enable-pci-direct didn't change this.

If you need more information about my hardware, please write back. (I
don't read the mailing list.)

-- 
Yours, Sebastian Kirsch <address@hidden>