dirk@dksoft.incom.de (Dirk Koeppen) (01/02/90)
in <916@cgch.UUCP> whna@cgch.UUCP (Heinz Naef) writes: > we are looking for implementations of boot code in PROM suitable for the > boot PROM socket of the Western Digital 8003EBT(/A) ethernet adapter board. in <5868@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> whelan@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu writes: > Does anyone know of a boot ROM that will enable a machine to boot using > TCP/IP? We have a Boot PROM which fits into the 8 K-ROM socket of a Western Digital WD8003e or 3Com 3c503 Ethernet controller. It allows to boot nearly every software from a diskless IBM PC-AT or AT386 by dowloading the files from a TCP/IP host. On the host site we have an UDP/IP, ARP, BOOTP and TFTP running. When switching on the PC, the Boot PROM finds out his IP and the location from where to download by an BOOTP request. It downloads a diskette image from the host by using the TFTP protcol. A RAM disk driver then locks the physical drive A: and boots from the downloaded image. After the bootstrap the aquired RAM space is freed and the phys. drive A: is unlocked. The downloaded image consist of the 1:1 (packed and optimzed) bitimage of a bootable MS-DOS disk containing the TCP/IP software you want to run. The bootstap procedure takes about 5-10 seconds. We use the Boot PROM in combination with Locus PC-Interface. It also should work with Sun PC-NFS or KA9Q (net) which I have not tried out yet. cu, dirk@incom.de