[Netboot-general] General questions about boot roms, booting off network on older systems

[James S. <js...@cp...>]

Please note, i am not using any ROMS made from netboot images!  I am 
using a card with a boot rom from Intel!
I am just asking for general help on the issue of booting a machine on 
an ethernet.
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Hello, today my professor has given to me a few old EISA Intel 
Pro/10mbps ethernet cards.  They use the Intel FA82595TX chip-set, and 
all of them contain what my professor says is a boot ROM.  The boot rom 
has the Intel Logo and "352226-001" on it, and is in a 32 pin 
connector.  I assume this is the boot rom.

The reason i asked my professor for these cards with the boot roms is so 
i can create a diskless workstation. I have never worked with these 
older boot roms; this is my first shot.

Anyway, when i got home, I plugged one of the cards into an ATX 
machine.  The BIOS on this machine has no "boot from nic," but i dont 
think that is an issue when working with these older NICs with boot 
roms.  Then again, i know nothing about this issue.  Anyway, as the 
computer goes through the boot strap, I see nothing to do with the ROM 
being used to boot over network.  At this point i decide to shut the 
comptuer off.

Should older boot-enabled NIC's on a motherboard with a bios that has no 
"boot from network card" feature show me anything during start up?  How 
does the computer know to attempt booting from the nic?  How is it 
supposed to be aware of the Network cards ability to contact a BOOTP 
server/TFTP server?  How were those computers i saw 10 years ago know to 
boot from the NIC?  I can be assured there bioses did not support a 
"boot from network card" option (i did not see this until recent). 
**confused** How on earth does the clients boot process know to boot 
from LAN when there is a boot rom, but no "boot from lan" field in the 
bios configuration?



Disregarding the fact i did not see any startup messages, I connected 
the boot rom card to what will be the BOOTP/TFTP Server via crossover 
cable, and ran a packet analyzer  on the server.  I powered on the 
client with the  Intel Pro/10 boot-rom enabled card, and watched the 
packet analyzer on the servers display. All that happened was the server 
(not running BOOTP or TFTP as of yet) did a few broadcast ARP requests 
as it noticed there was a link present.  The Intel Pro/10 responded with 
nothing, and there were not any ARP entries on the server.

I continued to let the client search for boot devices, and ended up with 
nothing except "invalid  system disk".

What i wonder now is, if a servers interface was configured for BOOTP 
and upon a link between it and a client with a boot rom was made, would 
the BOOTP server start a conversation, or would the boot rom software 
initiate?  Does a BOOTP server wait for a link to come up and then ask 
the boot rom for its mac address, or vice versa?

Oh well, you can see i have no experience with this issue. How am I 
supposed to know whats going on when the client gives no output on 
startup as to wether or not its trying to boot from nic?  Why doesnt the 
NIC send out any frames when i start the machine up?  Please someone 
give me general theories as to how these things work.

Sorry for all the newbie questions, but I really want to start making 
use of these nics my professor has given to me.