[Etherboot-users] booting paralel or usb

[Carl K. <ca...@pe...>]

Given that over 1/2 the boxes I work with don't have built in support for PXE 
booting, and they don't all have the same nic, so I am messing with rom-o-matic 
floppies more than I want to.

What I would love is a floppy and an external (usb or parallel port) Ethernet 
connection that I can use to PXE boot memdisk and the proper rom-o-matic image for 
whatever nic is in the local box.  I think I can deal with figuring out what nic 
is in the box and picking the right rom-o-matic image, but a "super duper 
universal boots most nics" version would be awesome.

Hmm, now that I think about it, the "universal" rom-o-matic would take care of my 
problem: one floppy that boots all.  How hard would it be for the boot floppy to 
scan the PCI bus and use the ID to load the right driver?  (Not too concerned 
about ISA, USB or multiple nics.)

But, the usb rom-o-matic would have the advantage of being able to use an 801.11 
usb nic, which would be nice.

^Carl K