This text shows how to disguise NC7771 as DEGXA.
Disclaimer : Neither Terry nor I (Hideaki) are responsible if someone breaks their card, etc. doing this.
Posted by Terry K. from NY :
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I have determined how to re-program generic BCM5703 cards to have the
correct subvendor / subdevice IDs, and have successfully made a generic
HP NC7771 card report itself as a 3X-DEGXA-TB. It shows up in the SRM
console (v7.2-1) of my DS10 as well as under OpenVMS 8.3, and I have
tested network booting into a cluster via the card.
The procedure involves placing the card into an Intel-architecture PC
and running utilities downloaded from HP and elsewhere on the net, after
patching the contents of a file.
I am preparing a detailed writeup, but if you'd like to experiment,
here are the basics (for use with a rev NC7771 card):
1) download the update utility SP31728.exe from:
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/networking/us/download/24056.html
2) download a copy of b57diag.exe from:
http://portal.atcelestica.com/public/global/suppchman/alpha/alphadw.nsf/downloads/000031/$file/B57DIAG.EXE
3) unpack SP31728 somewhere on the hard disk and copy the file 7771v235.bin
to degxa.bin
4) using a binary editor, change the bytes starting at 0xA4 to the new sub-
vendor and subdevice by replacing bytes 00 CA 0E 11 with 60 1B 0E 11.
5) copy all of the files from your work directory to a bootable DOS floppy
6) boot the DOS floppy on a machine with the NC7771 card installed, and
give the following command:
b57diag -e b57kia -c 0 -t a35b35cd -f degxa.bin
Note: this assumes that this is the only 5703 card in this system. If
there are other cards, you may need to change the value of -c ("card").
7) move the NC7771 card to your Alpha system and enjoy your new DEGXA.
P.S. - I haven't tried this with other cards besides the NC7771 yet. As long
as the card reports itself as 14E4 / 16C7, the mod should work. 14E4 / 16A7
cards can probably be made to work, but I don't know if the bytes at 0xA0 in
the degxa.bin file should be changed to 16 A7 or not. More testing is needed,
but I don't yet have an older-rev card to test with.
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