Re: network booting

On Jan 10, 9:08 am, Jonno Downes <jonno...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I've just had a few "family free" days while my better half was
visiting her mother, so I've been playing around with some code to do
a 'network boot'.

Here is a dsk image [http://www.jamtronix.com/dsks/utherboot.dsk]
that does the following
- boots up dos 3.3
- obtains an IP address via DHCP
- looks for a TFTP server on the local LAN
- downloads a file called BOOTA2.BIN via tftp
- executes that file.

It's an alpha release (i.e. for the patient and adventurous only) with
the following limitations:
- only tested in AppleWin to date (I don't have acces to my real A2's
just at the moment)
- requires an uthernet card in slot 3
- requires a language card (or a iie)
- requires a DHCP server somewhere on your LAN
- requires a TFTP server somewhere on your LAN, that serves a file
canned BOOTA2.BIN
- BOOTA2.BIN must have a standard DOS 3.3 Binary fil 4 byte header (2
byte load address, 2 byte file length)

Eventually I want to get this to something that hides in a rom
somewhere, and does a proper 'diskless boot'. Some other obvious
enhancements are:
- a menu driven directory so you can select from all the files on the
server
- a patched RWTS so you can boot whole images not just individual
files

If anyone wants to poke around with the code, it's athttps://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=250168

This code is based on IP65 (http://www.paradroid.net/ip65)

Cheers

Jonno

ps - if you want to run a tftp server (e.g.http://tftpd32.jounin.net/
) on the same machine you are running Applewin on, it seems that you
need to have two nics, and have uthernet bound to one, and the tftp
server listen to the other. Otherwise the packets that the uthernet
card sends out are never seen by anything else running on the same
machine (VICE has the same behaviour, so it must be a feature of the
way they both use winpcap). Luckily my laptop has a wifi and a wired
connections.

You know, if you're using DHCP and TFTP... I think you're already most
of the way to PXE.

How cool would it be if you could bring up an Apple II on a PXE
server, just by adding a system architecture for it for the PXE server
and a boot image of some sort? And, just put a PXE boot ROM card in
slot 7 or something.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: network booting
    ... requires a DHCP server somewhere on your LAN ... and does a proper 'diskless boot'. ... I did actually research PXE a bit while getting the DHCP/TFTP code ... downloaded code to talk to the network card. ...
    (comp.sys.apple2)
  • pxeboot with IBM x335: failure
    ... I'm trying to boot an IMB x335 server via PXE. ... BIOS drive A: is disk0 ...
    (freebsd-stable)
  • Re: usb memory stick for linux
    ... respectively) don't need any extended options at all: just this: ... not sure how you'd manage to boot Linux over PXE without pxelinux... ... only turning off PXE in the BIOS or killing the DHCP server will stop it ...
    (uk.comp.os.linux)
  • Re: Booting a CE device over the network
    ... We boot DOS thru pxe but it is thru linux ... There's UDP support, DHCP support and TFTP server support (TFTP client ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsce.embedded)
  • Re: installing Ubuntu via PXE using tftpd32
    ... If possible, boot from CD-ROM or DVD, and install from there! ... turned off the windows firewall and the routers own DHCP server. ... Are you wanting to do a PXE install over a wireless LAN? ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)
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