hi,
 
> Hmm - so it seems I have to care about this...
> (or do you have some patches ready?)
sorry, no real patches. I've just done the following modification to
netif/i82557.c besides copying an old version of sys/dev/pci/if_fxpreg.h
($NetBSD: if_fxpreg.h,v 1.9 1998/08/25 01:08:16 thorpej Exp $) to
/sys/arch/i386/stand/lib/netif. that was enough for compiling netboot.sym 
and for netbooting the machines flawlessly...

diff -c /sys/arch/i386/stand/lib/netif/i82557.c /usr/lsrc/sys/arch/i386/stand/lib/netif/i82557.c
*** /sys/arch/i386/stand/lib/netif/i82557.c     Fri Feb 19 20:30:46 1999
--- /usr/lsrc/sys/arch/i386/stand/lib/netif/i82557.c    Thu Sep  9 09:52:17 1999
***************
*** 33,39 ****
  #include <machine/pio.h>
  
  typedef int bus_dmamap_t; /* XXX */
! #include <dev/pci/if_fxpreg.h>
  
  #include <lib/libsa/stand.h>
  
--- 33,39 ----
  #include <machine/pio.h>
  
  typedef int bus_dmamap_t; /* XXX */
! #include "if_fxpreg.h"
  
  #include <lib/libsa/stand.h>

> I had a look at the spec... Well - it's at least a try
> to make up a somewhat flexible network boot framework.
> Why they had to bastardize the bootp protocol... who knows.
I really haven't seen the point for this yet, too. 
 
> It looks possible to set a NetBSD second stage loader on top
> of that - the question is whether this is worth the effort.
> Are there PXE ROMs for a significant choice of network
> adapters?
hm, I don't know... a quick look at www.3com.com gives "PXE available
as an optional boot ROM", on www.smc.com PXE isn't even
mentioned. haven't looked for others... maybe only intel is really
active in this... so beeing able to produce a NetBSD bootrom for some
cards seems to be ok for now...

> And I remember to have agreed to some stupid license conditions
> before I could read the specs and samples. Another issue to
> look at.
oh yeah! really stupid, saying something which sounds like "everything
you devellop based on this spec is the property of intel". at least
that's the way I interpreted that crap...
umpf, I've never mentioned PXE, ok? ;-<

more seriously: I got those MSI-boards w/ onboard ethernet and PXE
support but no option to put my own bootstuff in (no ROM socket). as
theese peecees are intented for public use I really like to get them
as "rugged" as possible - and that is netbooting a minimalized NetBSD,
starting X11, starting Netscape Navigator and that's it!
putting the bootstuff on the harddisk is an option, but a ROM-based
netboot would be better. that's the reason why I asked for PXE support...

	-kurt