Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!vanvleck!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!RELAY.PROTEON.COM!acm
From: acm@RELAY.PROTEON.COM
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: Boot PROM for NI5210.
Message-ID: <8806201355.AA21044@monk.proteon.com>
Date: 20 Jun 88 14:43:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 29


>> Yes, Novell can, but the interface card needs to have a PROM socket
>> that conforms to IBM's definition for extending BIOS.  The Micom 5210
>> card has NO such socket.  The 3c501 does (it's called MEMORY on my
>> card).
>>
>> Brad Davis

>  Many motherboards have extra sockets for ROM ( the missing BASIC?).  So
>  that seems like the least of the worries about booting from network.
>  More complicated is building enough intelligence into ROM to download
>  dos from file server, and short circuiting the attempted dos floppy/hard
>  disk boots.

For information purposes, what Novell does (I don't know about others) is
to make a file image (called net$dos.sys) which is a full disk image
including the dos hidden files and the boot stuff along with all the fats
and directories.  This file is first transferred to the pc and put into a
temporary ram disk.  This disk then is the one that is "booted" to bring up
dos and the Novell shell which then brings the PC into the net like a
floppy one.  The process of getting into the boot rom is via the bios which
looks at the rom address boundaries at the initial power on boot for the
purpose of finding diagnostic roms on interface cards.  If one exists, it
is called by the bios.  If this takes over the pc and does not give it back
to the bios the boot can then control.  The format of the rom and the
process are well described in the IBM Technical Reference manuals on the PC
that describe (and include listings of) the bios.

     -Al Marshall