Any Bootable Wireless NICs ?

ReidMaynard asks: "Recently I've been playing with the idea of a wireless netboot system...however, I would like not to use a floppy to boot from. I understand that if a NIC card has a EPROM socket, I can flash an EPROM and stick it in the NIC to do a netboot ... but I cannot seem to locate any wireless cards (or more exactly) any pcmcia-to-PCI adaptors which have a EPROM socket ... does anyone know of such an animal ... or a PCMCIA card which has a built-in programmable area (unlikely) ...?" This is one of those things that sounds really obvious once it's been spoken, but I'd never thought about this before. Sure would have been nice in certain office environments I've been in.

My Opinion on Why This Probably Doesn't Exist

[Starquake]

I bought a small wireless network from my boss (I worked in a very small hardware/software support company) about a year ago. When we were discussing the different components, one of the things that came up was the PCI-to-PCMCIA adapter. I remember him pointing out that the adapter was designed to work with any PCMCIA card and not just the wireless card. My thinking is that the people designing these things decided not to include an EPROM socket simply because it was meant to be interchangeable in that manner. I'm just speculating here, and I can't speak for any other brand (mine's an Aviator Webgear), but odds are that you will have to a) build one yourself or b) pay someone to custom build this for you.

It's the memory address

[autocracy]

My understanding is that the whole thing focuses on the address of the chip. Hence, if you can get the machine to boot then it will boot from the EPROM. The trick is to get an EPROM programmed to speak to the wireless card...

Maybe a better solution

[jcausey]

I did a little research on this about 6 months ago, and I didn't find one damn thing. Last poster is right about the mem address point; however, that is a lot easier said than done.

A slightly better idea would be to get one of those IDE flash drives w/1 MB of space or so (even less). Put the netboot data on them like you would a floppy. This way, it's less expensive, easier to use, and much cheaper to upgrade to a better 802.11 standard when it comes.

Other way...

[obi]

Some other poster mentioned a flash connected to your ide. But if you're adventurous, you can use something like the linuxbios project (http://linuxbios.org) - what they are doing is overwriting your bios using a stripped down version of linux. Then it can boot another linux image from disk, or from the network.

Additional advantage: you get in linux in 3 seconds in some cases :)

Of course it all depends if your chipset supports it, and if you're willing to risk it. (of course if you have a flasher, so that you can restore a working bios image it's less of a risk)

YES! but not 802.11

[kneecap]

Stored in the basement at work there are three or four ISA legacy NCR wavelan cards. Each of these have an empty EPROM socket. They run in the 900 Mhz band (915 Mhz I think), max data speed of 2Mbit. At one time we used one in a server to provide home access for an employee. I do not know if there are any access-points for these. The chips on the board either have NCR or AT&T(NCR) on them, this was probably before Lucent was around. Linux support is provided by the wavelan driver, you need the iwconfig program to set the particulars. Also the cards do not have built in antennaes, you need to connect one to the BNC connector on the card.

it's been done before

[matrix0040]

here's what i found on the net here [cat.org.au]

1) "Eagle": has RG45, BNC plug and D-15 socket on it.
Main chip: advanced micro devices AM79C960KG (1992)
Card part number: 60-E2100C-2 Date: 94/08 Distrib : IPEX
EPROM is a National Semiconductor NM27C256Q (already on-board)

2) "Novell, Inc 1990"
Has a D-15 and BNC plug on it.
Main Chip: Advanced Micro Devices AM7990JC/80 (1985)
Card part Number : BD #738-000209-001 RevC Assy. #810-000209-001 RevF
Required EPROM is a 27256. I have a 27C512 off an old 486 motherboard.

Re:it's been done before

[ocie]

Somebody please mod the parent up. This is clearly on topic and useful information.

Re:it's been done before

[Phork]

im sorry, but this is not at all relevant, he coppied the specs for 2 of the many wired nics that support a boot rom, the question was about wireless cards, not wired. Lots of wired ethernet cards support a boot rom, my $6 rtl8139 cards do. It appears the original poster just searced the web for "nic" "wireless" and "boot" and copied some text without even reading it. it should be modded off topic at best.

Re:it's been done before

[ocie]

I don't know, I had to read the page that was linked in that post a few times before I figured out that the web page was talking about a sort of diskless bridge between a wired and wireless lan. The poster may have been a bit confused, but their heart was in the right place. Therefore, I would consider this on-topic. We are definately off-topic though:)

Some boot rom capable cards

[apmathur]

here are some of the cards that've boot rom capability

Kingston 10/100 [kingston.com]

Kti 10/100

True...

[Bake]

but the original poster was looking for wireless cards that are bootable.

Mac and Airport?

[shumacher]

I know the "New World" (i.e. anything from the iMac on) Macs will netboot. But I've not tried netbooting them via Airport. For that matter, I can't think of a reason that would prevent netbooting something besides MacOS.
Anyone try this?

Re:Mac and Airport?

[fosh]

This is probably through the Open Firmware.

All macs have a cool bootloader known as Open Firmware. This takes the form of a tiny little forth interpreter, and this is also where netboot-ing takes place. So, I am guessing that there are Ethernet drivers built into to this. As for Wireless cards, they seem fairly similar to regular nics, so mabey it is already supported. As I recall, the OF has a whoooole bunch of drivers, like USB and audio, already built in.

To check it out, restart your mac, and hold down apple-option-o-f when it first turns on. You will get a nice little shell in a few seconds. As I recall, type printenv to see a list a variables. A bunch of these have to do with netboot. I would guess that if you just set the IP, etc, evertyhing will work out.

Good Luck
--Alex Fishman

Re:Mac and Airport?

[ivan256]

Setup you BOOTP/DHCP and TFTP servers apropriatly and then try this command at the Open Firmware prompt:

'boot enet:<NIC #>,<bootfile name>'

enet:0 should give you the onboard cabled ethernet, and enet:1 should let you boot off the wireless. Whatever you put as the bootfile name is the file it will download off the TFTP server and execute.

Use another card with an EPROM

[specht]

If you have an empty slot in the machine you could add e.g. a standard NIC card with an EPROM socket. The EPROM socket on these cards has nothing to do with the cards core functionality, it's just a place where you can put a BIOS extension EPROM.

It's been a long time since I played with booting a machine over the net and I don't remember the name of the package that allows to create an EPROM image or a floppy image from the same data. The floppy image allows you to test the package before you burn it into an EPROM. Use this and see if you can the machine to boot via the wireless card. If it works, then burn the EPROM and put it into the standard NIC card (which you don't even have to configure).

Karl Heinz