Re: Cannot boot from floppy disk

[Erik Fair <fair%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Apr 28, 2014, at 08:28 , Dirk Heinrichs <dirk.heinrichs%altum.de@localhost> 
wrote:

> Am Montag 28 April 2014, 04:58:15 schrieb Miod Vallat:
> 
>> The BeBox doesn't even have an on-board Ethernet interface.
> 
> Netbooting can also be a feature of the NIC. Remember the times when you 
> could 
> buy network boot (e)eproms which you could plug into your NIC?

That's a PC (x86) BIOS thing: PXE boot; the BeBox is PowerPC-based, and 
(presumably) had its own unique firmware (though if Be, Inc. had been sensible, 
they would have used IEEE 1275 Open Firmware). Though you could make an 
argument that NIC driver F-code for Open Firmware (which was located on the NIC 
expansion card) is equivalent.

It's also not unheard of for systems without built-in Ethernet interfaces to 
nonetheless have firmware that knows how to netboot from certain supported 
Ethernet chips - the DEC Alpha PC164 motherboards were such: if you could put a 
DEC DE500-AA 10/100 Ethernet NIC (Based on the "tulip" 21140 chip) into one of 
the PCI slots, the SRM firmware would netboot through it.

But what I gather is that the answer for the BeBox is: no, not from firmware. 
Ergo, if you wanted to netboot a BeBox, you'd have to put a netboot second 
stage boot (with drivers for whatever Ethernet NIC you put in an expansion 
slot) onto a floppy or CD-ROM (or hard disk ...).

        Erik <fair%netbsd.org@localhost>