Hello Derek, Thursday, April 15, 2004, 7:57:03 PM, you wrote:
> I just recently got my hands on an Acute Network Technologies (ANT) TC5000 thin > client. It currently runs the citrix client and rdp on windows ce. I'd like to > try to convert it to work with LTSP. Does anyone have any experience with these? > > It has a RealTek 8139 ethernet interface and a BIOS rom. What are the chances I > can put a 8139 etherboot ROM in it and make it work? I have one on order, but > I'm not optimistic because I tried a diskless workstations ROM (from a different > ethernet card) and it didn't seem to see it. any ideas are welcome. > > It has two ROMs in it. Here are the labels on the ROMs > > XpressROM > 1999-2000 > Insyde Software > (TC5000 BIOS) > > Microsoft > F645515 > (TC5000 DOC) You won't be able to take just "any diskless ROM" because the RTL8139 is a PCI board and thus only ROMs in its socket matching the PCI ID will work. Most probably they didn't tamper with it, so a standard ROM-o-matic.net ROM image for (IIRC) PCI ID 10ec:8139 will do - if it's a non-standard, there are other PCI IDs known to be used for this NIC. Perhaps you can investigate this - in system control center (if there's something like that in wince) or on BIOS device list. Another chance is to mod-dify the BIOS. It probably is some flash ROM like 29Cxxx with 2 or 4MBit (256kBytes or 512kBytes). Chances are you can use this Flash with your EPROM burner. I'd recommend for security reasons you get a same-sized fresh flash, but if it's OK for you then you probably could use that existing chip and get a backup before testing. This is most useful if it has an AWARD or AMI BIOS (Phoenix ones don't suffice), then get the appropriate tools from the internet (look into etherboot wiki at wiki.etherboot.org, I think there's more info available) and add the etherboot code to the BIOS. This too needs an appropriate PCI ID, so there's no way around that. In case everything works, BIOS should have a new entry "Boot from Network" or "Other(1)" or "Etherboo" or such (depends, I saw different versions of this). I have no idea if XpressROM in reality is a relabeled AMI or AWARD... In case it is not, perhaps flashing a LinuxBIOS is a good idea. That I have no idea of, so you probably need to dig deeper into that materies. You probably find enough information on the net about it - I think it's a full blown BIOS replacement that also works with etherboot, so it could be worth a try. Always remember to backup the BIOS first :-) Two more annotations: - Realtek allows to download a PXE ROM from their website. If you need PXE, you can try it (which I don't). - Newest Etherboot development versions implement PXE too, which offers you the choice of etherboot-like booting or PXE, at runtime configurable on your dhcp server. If you use the etherboot style of net booting anyway, having a stable release of etherboot would suffice easily. Best regards & HTH Anselm ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
