Re: Using PXE+GRUB to boot Linux on a Thinkpad T20

[Donald Becker]

On 29 Jul 2002, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
> Donald Becker <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > There was a specific reason I asked about the subsystem: the "-5"
> > version requires setting an undocumented register.
> 
> How can I determine the subsystem?

lspci -s 0:3 -v -n

> Something like "od -x < /proc/bus/pci/00/03.0" (which bytes?), or is
> there an easier way?  Perhaps this would be a good thing to include in
> some diagnostic output, maybe just when "debug" is set.

The 'vortex-diag' program will print out the subsystem ID, as stored in
the EEPROM.

> (By the way...  It occurs to me that this is just a tiny part of
> handling a single sub-line of a single product from a single vendor.
> And it is still ridiculous.  How do you stay sane?)

This is a case where two mini-PCI boards with the same device ID and
same chip revision act differently.  The only detectable difference is
the subsystem ID.

To support this board it took a tester with two mini-PCI boards, one
working with the 99X driver and one not working, along with a lot of
work and many test versions.

> > That indicates that the 2.4 kernel was not properly activating the
> > interface.  The pci-scan support is needed to activate the card.
> 
> Interesting.  Is pci-scan slated for inclusion in the stock kernel?

No.  The pci-scan interface was defined in 1999 to combine PCI
detection, PCI power managemet and hot-swap PCI/CardBus in one
cross-version compatible interface.  The interface was reject in favor
of a initially-simpler PCI detection function that didn't address all of
the issues.

> > Try the 0.99Xd test driver at
> >       ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/network/test/3c59x.c
> 
> Well, it is not a -5 interface.  It's a "3c1556B mini-PCI".  No "-5";

What's the driver detection message?

-- 
Donald Becker                           address@hidden
Scyld Computing Corporation             http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210               Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403                      410-990-9993