Etherboot provides a means to boot from a network on a PC. The driver
can be put on a floppy and then set your bios to boot from a floppy, or
if your bios can be set to boot directly from the nic you can burn the
image or program the image onto the network eeprom. I have done this
with three network cards and loaded Linux. The etherboot site says that
this can be done with Linux, FreeBSD, and DOS, but it says it sees no
reason that it couldn't be done with an arbitrary OS because the
protocol and boot file formats are general (I'm quoting.)
http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/
List of network cards that have drivers:
http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/doc/html/userman-2.html#ss2.1
-Robert
Derek Glidden wrote:
>
> Mario Lombardo wrote:
> >
> > Yes, I do have another machine (386 and 486) I could load an x86 version
> > of Linux, then setup a network card, get on the net and surf to get the
> > Sun images, and set up a tftp server to boot this machine, etc., but I
> > think it would be easier if somebody knew of a tftp repository
> > somewhere. If there isn't one, I'd like to start one.
> >
> > I'm the one being dense here, so here it goes:
> > I feel with all the newer intelligent x86 BIOSes, such as rebuilding
> > BIOS' flash via a floppy drive during a catastophic event, issuing a
> > bootp request when all local boots fail, and other such nifty things
> > these *Intel based* machines can do, I feel by now there should at least
> > be somewhere somebody can get a Linux machine started w/o the need of an
> > archaic floppy drive or an expensive and bulky CD-ROM drive. Like I was
> > saying, 'I'm the one being dense here.'
> >
> > I'm sure most people will agree. The Internet is here to stay. Floppy
> > drives are going the way of the mad cow, and CD-ROMs are just too much
> > when it comes to filling the need for a quick two or three megabytes of
> > intelligence to get things started. Suns have been able to take care of
> > themselves with their kick-butt Boot PROMs long before PC BIOSes. I
> > think with PCs now being able to do the same, I thought something would
> > be out there. Perhaps it's wishful thinking.
>
> I understand. I think you're just blinded a bit by how smart Sun-class
> hardware is. :)
>
> A PC BIOS in general can't boot over the network. Nobody cares because
> you can't load Windows over the network so nobody is going to put any
> effort into that. Plus the idea is that a PC motherboard is CHEAP and
> nobody wants to build a little miniOS into the BIOS that has smarts
> enough to run diags and do network booting and all that sort of thing
> like Sun boot monitors can do.
>
> cut
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