ChrisH Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 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
ChrisH Posted October 12, 2005 Author Posted October 12, 2005 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?
Geoff Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 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
ChrisH Posted October 12, 2005 Author Posted October 12, 2005 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.
ChrisH Posted October 12, 2005 Author Posted October 12, 2005 Hmm just looking at this all could I combine pxelinux with a etherboot image and side step shelling out for new NICs?
tosca925 Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 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.
ChrisH Posted October 12, 2005 Author Posted October 12, 2005 No floppy drives, no CD drives and they dont support booting from USB
ajbritton Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 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!
kingswood Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 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
E1uSiV3 Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 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.
ChrisH Posted October 13, 2005 Author Posted October 13, 2005 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?
OverWorked Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 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/productinformation/~42741~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.
OverWorked Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 I've seen Boot ROM's for the RTL8139 on sale for about £9 each. Can't remember where though! Sorry!
Geoff Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 You could always buy a compactflash adapator and boot off that.
ChrisH Posted October 14, 2005 Author Posted October 14, 2005 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/productinformation/~42741~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. Problem is I have tried a PXE card and the it turns out the mother board doesnt support it as well as mentioned above so im pretty much stuffed. Realisticaly I think im going to be stuck with these PCs another two years probably as well
Sean Posted October 31, 2005 Posted October 31, 2005 The problem we're having with RIS is that, on a number of machines (one set of RM desktops and half a set of Samsung laptops) while you can set the card to boot from network and the PXE boot loader starts up it reports a completely broken GUID - either a big string of 0's or a big string of F's - anyone know how to generate a proper GUID and flash it back to the ROM or whatever?
Dos_Box Posted October 31, 2005 Posted October 31, 2005 You can just use the mac address. The GUID bit is optional. When you create your managed computer simply enter the mac address and prefix it with lots of zeros until the next button is highlighted. This works every time.
Sean Posted October 31, 2005 Posted October 31, 2005 Yep that works! Thanks for that - both RM and Stone just stared at us blankly and blinked when we asked them - score one for EduGeek!
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