Enabling PXE on older machines

[Diatom]

Hi all

I have been using Fog with good results on Dell 280 and 360 machines. I would like to image some older Solar computers (New July 2003 so should be PXE compatible) The machines do not have integrated NICs so I cannot find any reference to PXE boot in the BIOS settings as I do with the more recent Dells using integrated NICs.

Any thoughts on how to get these to PXE boot?

Bob

[bossman]

@Diatom:

What are the model and specs of these computers?

It is probably the BIOS which is the problem and not the Nics, although you may have to upgrade the BIOS and also replace the Nics to accommodate.
I would check the BIOS specs first.

[srochford]

What NICs are they? Not all of them support PXE but some need to be configured - eg you sometimes press some magic key sequence as the machine goes through POST to get a setup for NIC settings and there you can enable RPL, PXE or nothing.

[PiqueABoo]

PXE is fairly ancient, and is often easier to invoke (for the immediate boot only) on older machines.

If there's no PXE at all you can get a floppy or CD to do it... there's a site somewhere (don't have the link sorry - may be the "etherboot" site) where you tell it what NICs you want and it makes you a custom ISO.

[edwardjrobertson]

Section 16.4 of the Fog user guide has the links to create a boot cd

FOGUserGuide - FOGWiki