Re: Unusable Realtek NIC after upgrading to NetBSD 9

[Rocky Hotas <rockyhotas%firemail.cc@localhost>]

On set 17  8:55, Vincent DEFERT wrote:
> You could try opening the firmware update's executable as an archive
> (they are often SFX - self-extracting ZIP archives),
> extract its contents to a FAT-formatted USB pen drive,
> reboot the laptop with the pen drive attached
> and enter the BIOS firmware flash utility (often the F7 key).

This is a good advice, which can be useful for similar cases. As regards
my laptop, the file is

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp66501-67000/sp66770.exe

(yes, the Compaq BIOS update is distributed by HP, it sounded weird to
me, too).
I tried to extract it with GUI `Ark' on Linux, with CLI `unrar' and by
executing the file itself, after renaming it as `sfx', as suggested
here:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/79074
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/115655

It didn't work, so maybe it's a different format.

> If you found a firmware update from 2014, your laptop may not be
> so old it can't update from a USB stick. :)

No, in fact IIRC it should also be able to boot from a USB stick (maybe
just for one of the external connectors, not all of them).

If the NIC never worked, a BIOS update could be meaningful. But this is
a different case. If with 8.1 the NIC worked, it should also work with
9.0.

Of course, a driver design requires a massive work I can't imagine and I
understand that simple needs of the user are not that much simple from
the developer's perspective.

Rocky