TX Timeout! error using GRUB with network support and sis900 network card

[Matthias Bertschy]

Hello,

I am using GNU GRUB 0.96 from CVS with network support for almost 1 
month with eepro100 and rtl8139 network cards.
So far, it has worked almost flawlessly on 4 different computers.
Knowing that I would add other computers to this setup, I compiled grub 
with the following network cards support:
--enable-eepro100 --enable-rtl8139 --enable-sis900

Today, I tried to network boot a computer using an Elitegroup 
motherboard with an intergrated sis900 network adapter (10/100 ethernet).
After the bootp command, GRUB fails to get the DHCP signal and displays 
the following:

Found SIS900 at 0xe800, ROM address 0x0000
Probing...[SIS900]
sis900_probe: MAC addr --:--:--:--:--:-- at ioaddr 0XE800
sis900_probe: Vendor:0x1039 Device:0x0900
sis900_probe: AMD 79C901 10BASE-T PHY transceiver found at address 1.
sis900_probe: Using AMD 79C901 10BASE-T PHY as default
sis900_read_mode: Media Link On 100mbps half-duplex
Searching for server (DHCP)...
sis900_transmit: TX Timeout! Tx status 8000024E.
sis900_transmit: TX Timeout! Tx status 8000024E.
sis900_transmit: TX Timeout! Tx status 8000024E.
sis900_transmit: TX Timeout! Tx status 8000024E.
sis900_transmit: TX Timeout! Tx status 8000024E.

I found on the etherboot mailing list a user having the same problem as 
mine:
http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg04913.html

It looks like the problem has been fixed since etherboot 5.1

As I looked in the source files of GRUB, I found that the sis900 driver 
was taken from etherboot 4.7 as said in the netboot/sis900.txt file.
Would it be possible to upgrade this driver into the GRUB source tree to 
fix my (very) annoying problem?

Thanks in advance.

Matthias Bertschy, Echo Technologies SA