Plans to support card Broadcom Net Extreme II - BCM5709 (14e4:1639)

[alexz]

I’ve encountered a very unpleasant surprise the other day, it appears that the network card Broadcom Net Extreme II BCM5709 (14e4:1639) on my Dell Power Edge 610 is not supported by iPXE. I’ve looked at the source code /src/drivers/net/bnx2.c and it appears that there is no driver support for this card.

To complicate things even more, I cannot change the mother board NIC nor I can add another PCI card.

Are there any plans to support this card at least basics?

Thank you.

P.S. Excellent project. Extremely useful and works on every other box I tried so far including VMs.

[robinsmidsrod]

(2011-05-02 01:01)alexz Wrote:  I’ve encountered a very unpleasant surprise the other day, it appears that the network card Broadcom Net Extreme II BCM5709 (14e4:1639) on my Dell Power Edge 610 is not supported by iPXE. I’ve looked at the source code /src/drivers/net/bnx2.c and it appears that there is no driver support for this card.

Are there any plans to support this card at least basics?

I have a laptop that has a very similar card. It works with the tg3 driver. Your card might work too in native mode if you add the PCI id into the driver. But I have to warn you, the tg3 is excessively slow. If you boot with your vendor PXE stack and chainload ipxe you should be able to get decent speeds. Chainloading is explained on the main ipxe.org website.

PS: I think bnx2 is the wrong driver for this card. I use tg3 for my BCM57xx. Which driver does your card use in Linux?

[alexz]

(2011-05-02 11:47)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  

(2011-05-02 01:01)alexz Wrote:  I’ve encountered a very unpleasant surprise the other day, it appears that the network card Broadcom Net Extreme II BCM5709 (14e4:1639) on my Dell Power Edge 610 is not supported by iPXE. I’ve looked at the source code /src/drivers/net/bnx2.c and it appears that there is no driver support for this card.

Are there any plans to support this card at least basics?

I have a laptop that has a very similar card. It works with the tg3 driver. Your card might work too in native mode if you add the PCI id into the driver. But I have to warn you, the tg3 is excessively slow. If you boot with your vendor PXE stack and chainload ipxe you should be able to get decent speeds. Chainloading is explained on the main ipxe.org website.

PS: I think bnx2 is the wrong driver for this card. I use tg3 for my BCM57xx. Which driver does your card use in Linux?

I've tried to add the specs of my card inside bnx2.c drivers:
PCI_ROM(0x14e4, 0x1639, "bnx2-5709", "Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5709", 0),

and it is still complains about "no more network devices".

Is it possible for me to use tg3 instead of bnx2 driver?

If this is a problem with proprietary Broadcom firmware file is it possible for me to inject this file into bnx2_fw.h file?

Thanks

[alexz]

(2011-05-02 17:10)alexz Wrote:  

(2011-05-02 11:47)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  

(2011-05-02 01:01)alexz Wrote:  I’ve encountered a very unpleasant surprise the other day, it appears that the network card Broadcom Net Extreme II BCM5709 (14e4:1639) on my Dell Power Edge 610 is not supported by iPXE. I’ve looked at the source code /src/drivers/net/bnx2.c and it appears that there is no driver support for this card.

Are there any plans to support this card at least basics?

I have a laptop that has a very similar card. It works with the tg3 driver. Your card might work too in native mode if you add the PCI id into the driver. But I have to warn you, the tg3 is excessively slow. If you boot with your vendor PXE stack and chainload ipxe you should be able to get decent speeds. Chainloading is explained on the main ipxe.org website.

PS: I think bnx2 is the wrong driver for this card. I use tg3 for my BCM57xx. Which driver does your card use in Linux?

I've tried to add the specs of my card inside bnx2.c drivers:
PCI_ROM(0x14e4, 0x1639, "bnx2-5709", "Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5709", 0),

and it is still complains about "no more network devices".

Is it possible for me to use tg3 instead of bnx2 driver?

If this is a problem with proprietary Broadcom firmware file is it possible for me to inject this file into bnx2_fw.h file?

Thanks

One more question.. What is your vendor ID and PCI ID for your network card in your laptop?

[robinsmidsrod]

As we figured out on IRC, bnx2 is indeed the more correct driver for your card, but just adding a PCI ID to bnx2.c didn't work. Someone more experienced needs to figure out if it is possible to get the BCM5709 card + firmware working.

[alexz]

I decided to use undionly.kkpxe loaded from tftpboot via regular PXE. for now