50% of my machines are not PXE capable so I thought about getting some cheap cards to replace the crud thats in them.
I have some realtek ones in a few machines that are PXE capable so I thought Id try some of them but the ones I got , even though they are identical virtually dont seem to be PXE capable grrrrr ..
Can anyone reccomend me some cards please? The cheaper the better
Hmm after a little more experimenting .....
I have found that putting in a card I know is PXE enabled yields the same results. I have set lan as the first boot option and there is no other options I can think of in the BIOS. I cannot update the BIOS as the last two I tried just lock up and trash the BIOS.
Any ideas?
Remeber you need a PXE capable bios too. If you can't get straight PXE to work, try doing it in software with the PXELinux microdistrobution.
http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php
I was thinking it was the BIOS thats whay I mentioned. Pretty typical really with these crud machines. I shall check out the link thanks.
Hmm just looking at this all could I combine pxelinux with a etherboot image and side step shelling out for new NICs?
Correct.
We use some Realtek and we have to boot with the RIS created floppy to get them to work, but once the floppy is in place all is well.
No floppy drives, no CD drives and they dont support booting from USB
Surely, as long as your BIOS supports modifying the boot order (to put the network card first), then a cheapo PXE NIC would do the trick?
I tried long and hard to get Etherboot working. It felt like I got really close, but never quite got there. I have since read somewhere that it is not compatible with RIS. If anyone knows how to get Etherboot working with RIS, I would love to know exactly what has to be done!
Yes- RealTek 8139 chipsets tend to PXE boot either with the remote boot generated floppy or (sometimes, strangely) without one! I don't know whether this has to do with different iterations of the chipset or something, but it's the most prominent chipset on our school network so if it doesn't PXE boot so we can use Ghost/RIS then I end up with a huge headache! lol!
Paul
the 8139s usually have a socket on the board where a PXE chip can be placed (see attached picture)
Im guessing you have a mix of cards with and without PXE ROMs on them.
That slot is for a proper boot rom you can program. On the Pxe enabled cards I have that slot is vacant.
I dont think my idea of PXElinux and Etherboot will ever work as Im wanting to use it with RIS. I would guess this needed its own partition which even if it was d: and RIS just did C: as usual (as it will only do one partition) I would have to redo the boot loader after the fact etc etc.
Anyone else think there would be a decent way of getting it to work?
I know this doesn't really answer your question, but I've had the same problem. I had a load of PCs with built-in adapters that would only support RPL boot. Floppy drives no good as the built-in adapter wasn't supported, and many floppy drives full of fluff anyway.
I ended up just buying a load more 3com PXE capable NICS. They're about £20 each, so I just bought them steadily a few at a time so the Finance Manager wouldn't have a fit.
http://www.misco.co.uk/productinform...~WW~/index.htm
It's paid off though. I now have all my network PXE capable, and RIS images for everything. I can re-install a machine completely in just 2 minutes of my time.
I've seen Boot ROM's for the RTL8139 on sale for about £9 each. Can't remember where though! Sorry!
You could always buy a compactflash adapator and boot off that.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks