8/13/2014

iPXE, milestone


RE: ASIX USB to Ethernet 
 

All bugs I am aware of have been fixed.

If you clone the github project

# git clone -b usb-net-drivers https://github.com/johntwillis/ipxe

Change to ipxe and type 'make' it will proceed to build the default ipxe images.

I used the bin/ipxe.iso image to successfully boot from a USB ASIX Adapter, obtain a dhcp address and download itest.ipxe script file and used that to download a tomrtbt kernel and initrd and then booted from that.

Any further work will be to support more hardware; USB host controller types and USB devices. 
Prior to this there were a few [unknowns] which  took time to discover and fix.
  1. The build would not [automatically] add USB device drivers to the default Make 'target' - it works now, parserom.pl imposed a requirement on the source files to provide USB ID's for supported USB Devices.
  2. The resulting bin/ipxe.iso would work only when providing a Make DEBUG=uhci_hcd parameter - it works without that parameter now, the ohci_hcd host controller driver was competing during linking, ohcd support has been removed for now.
  3. Pegasus USB device driver would not compile - USB ID's in the source were not in a format that could be recognized by the parserom.pl build utility. They have been reformatted and the pegasus driver now compiles.
The code started out as a project several years ago on a previous ancestor branch of the current iPXE project. When iPXE branched from that project, this code was not brought along.

It has now been brought over and brought up to date to work with things the way they currently exist in the iPXE project.

This 'branch' has not been merged back into the main iPXE.org master code tree.

It is my hope that one day it will be.

But for now I would appreciate anyone with an interest in iPXE USB Adapter support to download it, try it out and submit comments.