Client Boot problem

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Shishir Jha wrote:

> Now the problem is though the client boot from the floppy and Hard Disk
> easily using ROM Images, but when we tried to boot the client using the
> BootROM on the NIC it refuses to boot, there is no indication of the
> Bootloader being loaded in the NIC. 

I presume you're certain you have the right bootrom for your exact card
here, are you?

In general, when we've done this, we buy a pci network card from
rom-o-matic.com which includes the ROM correct chip.  I realise that's more
expensive, but it keeps life simple and there's no question of configuring
the BIOS, etc.

> Now when we use the same NIC to boot relatively newer Board like Intel
> 865 and 915 the same NIC boots fabulously and searches for the DHCP
> Server. 

Is it possible these machines are just PXE booting and your boot ROM isn't
doing anything?  Do they boot without the ROM?  A lot of modern machines
do.  In fact I'm a little surprised the others don't (be sure and check the
BIOS for any option to enable PXE).

> Due to this we have run into trouble as we had vowed to disk and
> floppy less clients for the Lab.  Though we could get HDD for the
> clients, we are now facing a budget constraint as the money was used to
> buy BootROM for the NIC rather than Second hand Hard Disks to boot the
> client.
> 
> So If anybody can help me with any info about how to boot these clients
> using the BOOTROM I could be really glad, the specification of the client is
> as follows,
> 
> 1. P3 667 - 1000 Mhz, 128 MB Ram, Intel 815 board
> 2. Award BIOS dated 2000 with an option for boot from LAN
> 3. Realtek 8139 with EPROM as BOOTROM, ROM images downloaded from
>    rom-o-matic.com

You might ask Martin Herweg who probably sold them to you if he has any
understanding of this.  If you have bought the wrong chips and you're
lucky, he might agree to give you some credit if you send them back.

Gavin