[K12OSN] Booting older thin clients

["Terrell Prudé Jr."]

I have one 3Com 3C905B NIC with a bootrom from disklessworkstations, and
it works just great.  It's installed in a Pentium-166 w/ 32MB DRAM.  The
only reason that I didn't order more is that we have a bunch of Dell
OptiPlex GX1's that support PXE-booting.  :-)

--TP
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Michael Blinn wrote:
> Thank you - I ordered a test batch of bootrom NICs from
> disklessworkstations and will be booting old machines soon!
> Regards,
> Michael
>
> Petre Scheie wrote:
>> No, it's part of the x86 architecture, the same way it 'knows' to ask
>> the floppy drive or hard drive for some sort of boot code.  I've got
>> a 486 from 1994 or so with a bootrom NIC and it boots just fine (I
>> just use it for showing off).  Any PC will do.
>>
>> Petre
>>
>> Michael Blinn wrote:
>>>  Yeah, my adult users would lose the CDs (;
>>>
>>>  Does the NIC with bootrom route require a semi-new BIOS that can
>>> recognize a NIC as a boot device? If not, from a purely intellectual
>>> standpoint, how does the computer know to boot from it?
>>>
>>> Thanks Petre,
>>>  Michael
>>>
>>> Petre Scheie wrote:
>>>> You can boot a thin client from a CD, just like you can boot one
>>>> from a floppy disk.  And you can still use the CD drive and the
>>>> floppy drive for Local Device Access (LDA).  But there are some
>>>> tradeoffs.  First, to use the CD or floppy drive, users will have
>>>> to remove the boot CD/floppy, which means they're going to lose the
>>>> CD/floppy or scratch/break it or forget to put it back in, etc.  If
>>>> your users are all adults, this might, MIGHT be manageable; but if
>>>> your users are kids, I think you'll find it frustrating.  BTW, LDA
>>>> does not support music CDs in the clients.
>>>>
>>>> You can buy a NIC with a bootrom for $20 at
>>>> disklessworkstations.com. These are great, and you never have to
>>>> worry about losing the boot media.  Of course, using an etherboot
>>>> CD or floppy is cheaper, so it really depends on what your priority
>>>> is.
>>>
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>>>
>>
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>
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