Re: netbsd-INSTALL Kernel gone?

[Michal Suchanek <hramrach%centrum.cz@localhost>]

On 28 November 2010 22:13, David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 12:31:00AM -0800, Aaron J. Grier wrote:
>> >
>> > Also some machines (eg. lots of Pentium III class hardware) can't do
>> > netboot but can do boot from floppy.
>>
>> netboot can be a function of the ethernet card. ÂI have a 3Com 3c905C-TX
>> which can PXE boot on my pentium pro.
>
> It usually depends on the presence of the optional 'boot prom'
> on the ethernet card.
> For motherboard interfaces the relevant boot code is included on the
> bios prom - now that bif proms are cheap.
>

Unfortunately, most boards of that class don't include an onboard
ethernet and I have seen some with broken/missing PXE rom.

While it is still quite feasible to get a PCI ethernet card that has
the rom on it some boards would fail to initialize the card rom and
some (mostly notebook) boards don't have any useful slots for ethernet
cards.

I heard about cardbus cards with a boot rom but I have not yet seen one.

Also some ancient (Pentium I, some Pentium II ?) notebooks have only
pcmcia and on these you really need the floppy for bootstrap - or take
the disk out and install on another machine (if the disk is
accessible). I am not even sure any NetBSD release has floppies with
pcmcia drivers, had to build my own when I tried to bootstrap NetBSD
1.6 or 2 on one of those old notebooks with a pcmcia wifi.

Thanks

Michal