Hi,
I’m using an old 3com network card on my system. It has a space for an eprom. Why would one put an eprom on a network card?
Thanks,
… john
You can use it to install a minimal boot image on the network card that typically has just enough smarts to find the operating system image and root file system somewhere else on the network. See Etherboot. This permits one to build systems with no internal storage devices. We used to do this to set up rack-mounted diskless servers for parallel computation clusters.
Hi Kyrie,
So, there’s no real advantage to a simple home user who only surfs the web and checks his emails?
… john
See also:
Often informally called PiXiE Boot.
The place where I do some of my work we use this method for reloading/reimaging machines as needed.
Not really, more a commercial environment thing where you have prebuilt custom drive loadouts that are adjusted regularly, that way any machines in need of setup or reloading always get the latest loadout.
overkill for a few users, essential when managing hundreds if not thousands of machines.
On a modern card there is no need for a PXE eeprom socket, because the ROM required for PXE is so small that it is just included by default.
On an old card, there was no such thing as PXE, and an optional EEPROM contained software for a Thin Client.
In between came, I guess, EEPROM implementations of PXE, but I don’t remember that.
Interesting. When I was in grad school we had two PDP-11s. One had a ROM with the boot sequence, the other didn’t. You had to toggle in the boot sequence for that one. Not fun, even when you memorized the octal for the sequence.
OK. Thank you all for your guidance. It would seem like a waste of time for me.
… john
No time spent in the pursuit of knowledge is wasted.