> 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.
My logic here was that if I use an etherboot floppy in a machine with a different ethernet card, it won't boot, but at least the etherboot code will run and attempt to find a card. When I put in the Linksys bootrom, I got nothing. I have a realtek bootrom on the way. I'll give that a shot. > > 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'v never really played with bios and ROMS beyond changing setup options and plugging in the right ROM. I don't have a burner. Looks like I have some learning to do (and possibly some new toys to buy ;-) > > 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 :-) I haven't found any "setup" menu for this bios (XpressROM) If anyone knows more about this bios, please chime in. I've tried pressing all the normal keys at bootup (f1,f2,delete,enter,f8,etc) to get into the bios, but no luck yet. > > 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. Thanks for the reply. -Derek > > Best regards & HTH > Anselm > > > -- Derek Dresser http://network.gouldacademy.org/ Gould Academy Bethel, ME 04217 (207)824-7700 "What is research but a blind date with knowledge?" --Will Harvey ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ ------------------------------------------------------- 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_id70&alloc_id638&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
