Am Mittwoch, den 10.01.2007, 09:50 +0900 schrieb [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> On Wednesday 10 January 2007 01:34, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:
> PXE wireless boot is realistically not going to happen!
> 
> James
> 
> PS
> I hate general unqualified statements, so
> Before the wireless card can PXE boot the host PCMCIA interface must be 
> enabled then the card must be enabled, all must be generic to any host and 
> presumably to any LAN card. All done from the bootrom on the not yet working 
> card ...

Just to fill in some technobabble:
Most wireless cards in laptops connect via one of the following three
interfaces:
- USB
- PCMCIA
- PCI (miniPCI being basically no difference for the software)

The first two are very hard to support in a minimalistic environment
like that of a BIOS or boot rom chip. The last is easy though - and in
fact there is some rudimentary support for at least one wireless chipset
in Etherboot. So strictly speaking PXE in its Open Source incarnation
can be used over a wireless link with certain, unacceptable,
restrictions.

But then you still suffer from lots of problems:
- AFAIK encryption just is NOT there, and even then, anything harder
then WEP is really complicated to do
- WLAN configuration data needs to be stored somewhere also
- Most wireless cards seem to need several seconds up to a minute before
they "see" the access point at all. This not really helps with network
booting

Of course all this is not a problem with a mini distro on the laptop
hard drive, or on a USB stick. Some laptop models seem to feature an
internal USB port - not necessarily as a plug, but as pins on the
mainboard. My (old) Acer laptop has those pins for the optional
integrated CF/MS/SM/AB/CD/EF card reader, which is not there. Removing
the hard disk drives has been an easy task with all the laptops that I
had to do it with, mostly unscrewing a piece of plastik and pulling the
disk out. CD drives are more difficult and you would need to replace the
bay front, so perhaps it is easier to just disconnect those internally.

BR
Anselm


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