NIC bootrom burning

NURDspace Project
Participants	Dennis
Skills
Status
Niche
Purpose
Tool
Location
Cost
Tool category

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Goal

Goal is to gather information on how to equip certain NICs with software for netboot stuff, for instance iPXE or gPXE

Information per NIC vendor and model

3Com

3C905-TX

We've got 2 of those, one REV A and one REV B. There's a DIP32 socket on both.

3C905-TX-M

We've got 5 of those, with flash soldered on the board.

Possible flashing methods

Flashrom

Flashrom has support for some 3Com Cards but I could not get this to work just yet.

In system programming

Since the Atmel AT49BV512 is soldered on, in system programming might be nice to try. For this one could build or buy some socket that can be put over the chip and connect this to a programmer, possibly the Silicon Image card I already have. This card also works with flashrom.

3Com tools

• http://paperlined.org/apps/FreeGeek/PXE_ROMs/3com.html

3C905B-TX-NM

This one has a DIP32 socket.

3C905CX-TX-M

This one has a AT49BV512 flash chip soldered on.

Flashing with flashrom

Flashing with flashrom (latest from source on Debian 6) works. Rom image has to be exactly 65536 bytes. I used a gPXE 1.0.1+ image from the gPXE rom builder.