david@uhccux.UUCP (David Lassner) (10/15/87)
Does anyone know of networking products for the Mac
which allow diskless booting and operation of client
systems from a server?
We're looking at setting up a partially unattended
lab in which certain software would be available
without requiring the use of floppies. If you've
used any such products, comments will be appreciated.
Mail replies to me, and I'll post a summary back here.
--
David Lassner, University of Hawaii Computing Center, 808/948-7351
INTERNET: david@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu PLATO: david/p/hawaii
UUCP: {ihnp4,uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!david
BITNET/OTHER: david%uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu@rutgers.eduevan@ndcheg.UUCP (Evan Bauman) (10/15/87)
In article <954@uhccux.UUCP>, david@uhccux.UUCP (David Lassner) writes: > Does anyone know of networking products for the Mac > which allow diskless booting and operation of client > systems from a server? > > We're looking at setting up a partially unattended > lab in which certain software would be available > without requiring the use of floppies. If you've > used any such products, comments will be appreciated. I've often wondered why Apple did not include this as part of it's Appletalk ROM code. We have a few diskless Suns here, and they boot from a local device if available. If a local disk or tape is not present, they will search for a boot partition on the ethernet. So the question is whether Apple is going to include this feature in some future version of the Macintosh ROM. Evan Bauman Univ. of Notre Dame ..!iuvax!ndcheg!evan
verber@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark A. Verber) (10/16/87)
As far as I know, no one currently has anything that will do this. Many universities have hassled Apple about this, but it has stated very low priority. Only recently did we get an agreement that the MacII with EtherTalk should have that capability (when running A/UX). Two of the guys here have the basic design of a daughter board which would sit over the ROMs. It will use a programmable logic array to patch key locations in the ROM and then have PROM for a network booter, etc. This will be finish as soon :-) as things calm down here. If you had someone who was willing to put out a bit of work you could hack something together yourself. The easiest hack would be to build a little SCSI device that would load in a network bootstrap and the go. Cheers, ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Science Department Mark A. Verber The Ohio State University verber@ohio-state.arpa +1 (614) 292-7344 cbosgd!osu-cis!verber