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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Cyberus on February 02, 2004, 04:07:52 AM

Title: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: Cyberus on February 02, 2004, 04:07:52 AM

Are there cards that support this: Booting from a drive in another machine?

Cheers

Title: Re: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: Thomas on February 02, 2004, 10:03:42 AM

AFAIK not. In order to boot from a network drive you need the network driver, TCP/IP stack and remote software all in a firmware ROM. AFAIK there is no expansion at all which has this.

But it should be possible to create a floppy that starts the network, creates the necessary assigns and then boots from the network. Just like a slightly  expanded OS3.9 emergency disk.

Bye,
Thomas

Title: Re: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: whabang on February 02, 2004, 10:12:00 AM

Well,
didn't Elbox sell Zorro II flash cards for such occations?

Title: Re: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: Castellen on February 02, 2004, 10:35:12 AM

The Quicknet 2000 cards allowed you to boot from a remote server if desired, plus gave you powerful Arexx control of the machine over the network.
Good luck in finding one of these cards though, they're quite old now.

Cards like the Ariadne 1 & 2 can be fitted with a boot ROM, but you'd have to write the software for it yourself.  I don't know of any available binary files you could easily use to do the job.

Title: Re: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: Cyberus on February 02, 2004, 04:06:49 PM

Thanks for the replies guys.

So booting off a floppy disk looks to be the answer.
Will I have trouble fitting all the necessary on a floppy disk?

I suppose if I got an X-surf I could attach a CF to one of the IDE connectors, and store the TCP/IP stack etc on there to be accessed after a basic startup from the floppy.

Title: Re: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: QuikSanz on February 02, 2004, 04:15:22 PM

Hi,
The Algor USB card has a flashrom on it.

Chris

Title: Re: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: Thomas on February 02, 2004, 05:23:54 PM

If you have a CF->IDE connector, you should attach it to the internal IDE bus, so you can boot from it without any floppy. The IDE connectors on the X-Surf cannot boot.

But if you already have a CF card of let's say 16MB, you can  store the entire AmigaOS on it, no need for a slow network boot.

Bye,
Thomas

Title: Re: Booting from Zorro II Network Card
Post by: Cyberus on February 02, 2004, 05:48:06 PM

Ah, but older zorro II machines don't have the IDE bus unfortunately :-(