RE: Netboot Windows 95 info

[skyman <skyman@iastate.edu>]

I also am interested in doing this.  I have been searching for information
for the past couple of weeks and have found a few but rich in content web
sites.

My situation is, as I venture you will see many newcomers, is that I
purchased 20 new PC's from Gateway (http://www.gateway.com) that are
integrated motherboards with little or no information on the various
components.  A nice surprise I found when I received these new computers is
that they are all network bootable.

So for my own information I started learning about RPL, remoteboot, DCHP,
TFTP, BOOTP, bootroms, proms, etc...  From my searching I believe that most
new computers sold from major manufacturers as "network capable" will be
coming with some sort of bootrom INCLUDED.


My problem is that I am somewhat puzzled by the network adapter in my
machines.  From what I can tell I have a AMD PCnet PCI II/PCnet FastEthernet
card, that has a LanWorks bootrom on it.  The first 6 digits of the MAC
address is 00:E0:B8.  The puzzling part is that from what I can tell there
is no prom chip on the motherboard.  There is a small square socket with the
corners chopped off, but there is nothing in it, there is no brick chip
holder like the old netcards have for proms.  BUT the computer DEFINITELY
has a prom of some sort in it.

I have had the machine turn on find my DHCP server, find a netboot file and
start booting, with a bunch of weird errors, like to many packages, and not
having any free memory between 480K and 640K.

Any help with any of this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
John