glen@aecom.yu.edu (Glen M. Marianko) (08/01/89)
I have an Interlan NI5210 board in my workstation remote booting
(via PROM) to a V2.15 SFT II dedicated server. My problem is,
once I've booted from the server I can't properly load a new
protocol stack onto the card (in my case, a packet driver to
support simultaneous TCP/IP and IPX/SPX). Obviously, this can't
work if the driver is loaded from the boot image on the server
(after the driver loads, it can't continue because the boot image
is gone). So, I thought, make a ram disk, load the drivers and
all associated files to it from the boot image file
(NET$DOS.SYS), change drive to it, and execute from there.
Obviously, it didn't work (system crashes) in this case. (This
is a three step process: load TSR driver, load IPX, load NET3 - as
upposed to the usual two-step IPX, NET3). Now, doing this in the
normal way a remote boot is supposed to occur (namely, run IPX
and NET3 and get F:LOGIN>) works fine.
What I want to understand is what is that boot prom doing
internally to DOS and how is it that when NET3 runs it gets
"undone". In other words, the boot prom software establishes
NET$DOS.SYS as drive A: (and B:!!) on the system. When NET3
runs, drive A: is returned to its normal state as referencing the
local floppy drive. It also seems to disconnect the fileserver
connection (as seen on the console MONITOR).
What I'd like to know is how to disengage the boot rom so I can
load my protocol stacks. (I even tried using MARKNET and RELNET
with no luck. I MARKNET, load standard IPX/NET3 driver, copy to
ramdisk, do a RELNET - but the driver still doesn't load! It
would seem that when I do the RELNET, whatever the invocation of
NET3 did to unhook the boot prom is restored, or in some
quasi-state.)
Technobabble solicited!
-- glen
(Note: this posting also appears on CompuServe in the NOVHARD forum.)
--
-- Glen M. Marianko, Supervisor of Data Communications and Hardware Support
glen@aecom.yu.edu - {uunet}!aecom!glen - CIS: 76247,450