Here is the scenario. This is a pre-release etherboot from Eric that has worked well on a number of platforms. The version is 5.1.2rc4.eb5.
I take two identical advantech PCM-5283-2 systems, and put in a linuxbios flash that has worked fine for many months on a PCM-5823-1. The Etherboot I have built will boot preferentially from Compact Flash, loading a kernel and initrd which uses eepro100 to contact a server. If no flash is found, then it does a boot over Ethernet.
System A System B CF boot Linux Works Works
No CF, boot net Works Fails; sends DHCP but never sees reply. Packet is visible on network and dhcpd responds
So, we have an interface which seems to work, and works on linux. It's basically the same board. etherboot correctly reads the MAC address from ROM. dhcpd sees packets from etherboot in both cases and responds. But System B never sees the reply ... this is really very odd.
Here is the best part of all. An older flash, running etherboot 5.0.6, System B works fine. Yikes!
I have no idea what relationship this has, if any, to the Smartcore problem I have been having, but it is at least pretty suspicious. The symptoms are almost identical.
Anyway, I'm going to stick with CF for now but wanted to let the community know what was up.
ron