At 11:17 -0400 08/05/2004, Brian Hechinger wrote:
>On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 07:58:00PM -0700, David P. Reese Jr. wrote:
>>
>>  Brian,
>>  Do you see anything interesting in your dhcpd logs?  I'd be curious whether
>>  you have the same version of OpenFirmware on the new board.  The netboot
>>  client is after all implemented in OF.
>
>nothing exciting.  just the request coming in, and dhcpd sending a reply back
>out, the same thing i see from tcpdump basically.
>
>hmmm, i'm not real fond of the idea of putting the old motherboard back in to
>check for firmware versions, but i could certainly be bothered to get you the
>version of the current board if you'll tell me how to do that. :)
>
>also, is there a way to update the firmware?  should i do that?

There are two versions of the 8600 board.   The first is simply the 
8600 and the second is the 8600 Enhanced or Kansas board.

I don't have the relevant Apple part numbers but there are a couple 
of ways to distinguish them.  If you can boot into Mac OS, then 
simply go to Apple System Profiler in the Apple menu on the left and 
launch it.   At the bottom there should be a caret for Production 
Information.  If you open that caret, there will be an item called 
ROM Revision.   The first version is $77D.34F2  and the 8600 enhanced 
is $77D34F5.   BTW, the 8500 board which also fits in that case (but 
uses a different power supply) is $77D.28F2.

When physically examining the boards, if you turn them over and 
locate the ROM chips, you'll find 341S0280 through 341S0283 on the 
original 8600 and 341S0380 through 341S0383 on the 8600 enhanced. 
The ROM chiips are four 44 pin chips about 1.1" X .5" with 22 pins 
down each long side.

On the 8500 board the ROM chips are 341S0169 through 341S0172.

These are Mask ROMs, and given the expense of revising them, I'm 
pretty sure that there are not revisions within a given part number. 
That is, if the ROM set reads 341S0169 through 341S1072 it has 
identical contents (firmware) to every other set of 341S0169 through 
341S0172 ROMs.

Anyway, that should allow you to determine if your boards have the 
same firmware on board.  You'll probably want to examine the chips on 
the uninstalled board, and use Apple System Profiler on the installed 
board (since it's a pain to remove), unless you can see the back of 
the board while it's installed in the case.

Because these are mask ROMs you cannot update the firmware and there 
were no updates provided by Apple.   You can write patches to store 
in the NVRAMrc.   Or you can install a new ROM module in the ROM 
slot.   Apple never provided ROM modules for this purpose, but there 
are a few ROM modules floating around out there.

Still, it seems odd that Apple would mess with the netboot client 
between revisions of the ROM.

Jeff Walther