PLPBTROM needs vendorID and deviceID for NETGEAR FA511

[Ilya]

I am trying to make a boot ROM using an old NETGEAR CardBus adapter model FA511.  The instructions for <plpbtrom> say that I need two data items:  vendorid and deviceid.  Where are these found? 

With that card plugged in to the Toshiba Satellite 1415, I booted Ubuntu 9.10 KK and ran <dmesg> and <lspci> but couldn't find those items. They are not printed on the Netgear labels either.

[Elmar]

use "lspci -vn" to get the vendor and device id

plpbtrom is able to grab the vendor and device id from your network card rom file.

you have a computer with a bios that supports booting from the cardbus network rom?

[Ilya]

Elmar:
you have a computer with a bios that supports booting from the cardbus network rom?

Uhh, I dunno.. the bios in that Toshiba doesn't appear to report as either AWARD nor AMI.. when you make the BIOS menu come up, it says:  ACPI BIOS ver 1.40.  Will that work?

[Elmar]

Will that work?

no

that it works, the bios must have the option to detect and set the pccard as boot option in the boot sequence and you must be able to replace the cardbus rom with the boot manager rom. i think nothing of this two required things is possible on this computer

[Ilya]

OK, when I run lspci -vn, it shows:   
Subsystem:  1385:511a

so to load the ROM on the cardbus, I use the cmdline:
plpbtrom -vendorid 0x1385  -deviceid 0x511A plpbtrom.bin plpbt.rom

is that right?

[Elmar]

so to load the ROM on the cardbus, I use the cmdline:
plpbtrom -vendorid 0x1385  -deviceid 0x511A plpbtrom.bin plpbt.rom

is that right?

no, this creates only a new rom file with the boot manager. you need a special tool to replace the new rom file with the rom on the pccard network card. but i don't think that you will find a tool that flashes the pccard rom.

[Ilya]

Elmar:
but i don't think that you will find a tool that flashes the pccard rom.

Ohh, OK.  I guess that ends that project.  Toshiba's proprietary BIOS and NETGEAR's ROM are not yet known how to modify then?

I guess I'll have to find a new CDRW to replace the dead one so I can upgrade OSes.

[Elmar]

Toshiba's proprietary BIOS and NETGEAR's ROM are not yet known how to modify then?

i don't know

[Icecube]

You can try FlashRom:

flashrom is a utility for identifying, reading, writing, verifying and erasing flash chips. It is designed to flash BIOS/EFI/coreboot/firmware/optionROM images on mainboards, network/graphics/storage controller cards, and various programmer devices.
    *  Supports more than 261 flash chips, 152 chipsets, 259 mainboards, 43 PCI devices, 5 USB devices and various parallel/serial port-based programmers.
    * Supports parallel, LPC, FWH and SPI flash interfaces and various chip packages (DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8, SO8/SOIC8, TSOP32, TSOP40, TSOP48, and more)
    * No physical access needed, root access is sufficient.
    * No bootable floppy disk, bootable CD-ROM or other media needed.
    * No keyboard or monitor needed. Simply reflash remotely via SSH.
    * No instant reboot needed. Reflash your chip in a running system, verify it, be happy. The new firmware will be present next time you boot.
    * Crossflashing and hotflashing is possible as long as the flash chips are electrically and logically compatible (same protocol). Great for recovery.
    * Scriptability. Reflash a whole pool of identical machines at the same time from the command line. It is recommended to check flashrom output and error codes.
    * Speed. flashrom is often much faster than most vendor flash tools.
    * Portability. Supports DOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like OSes. Partial Windows support is available (full support as patch).

http://www.flashrom.org/

@ elmar
It might be worth to add it to the plprom section.