Lan boot rom

[ookabooka]

Couldn't really find a good place to put this question. I want to build a computer that runs completely from RAM. No hd whatsoever. Not even a floppy. . . This is where it gets difficult. I know that Lan cards have BOOT ROM sockets. and that Mobos have Lan boot options. . . so I want to boot my computer from the lan card only, yes I reaplise this is highly impractyical and stupid. . . but I really want to make it happen. I was thinking of running linux, I know there is a version of linux designed to run under RAM only, except that it uses a boot disk. I can't remember what it is called though.

[Oswalden]

As best that I can remember, most any Linux can run run like that. You would use the floppy to initlize the NIC and goto the Linux box which is configured to accept connections as a terminal. The downside to that is all processing and everything is done on the linux server. Other then that, I'm not sure...

[ookabooka]

no. . .. There is a version of linux that runs all in ram. And I know it is possible to boot to DOS from the LAN ROM. The rom on the Lan card tells it what server to connect to etc. . . and then it downloads the boot image. . .

[turd]

here, interesting topic this should help:

http://frank.harvard.edu/~coldwell/diskless/

also some related and interesting

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=0243

[FunkDaMonkMan]

That would make for a blazing fast computer... 4 gigs of ram, so that would be about 3.5 gigs of storage.. which is plenty for windows xp and a couple of games.

[AmigoThree]

Yea funk but the bad thing is you lose all you info everytime you have to reboot unless you have a HDD to back it up before you reboot.

[ookabooka]

well, I was just gonna use it fold. Only rebooting when needed (every couple months). So loosing data wouln't be a problem, I have another linux server that could store the bootimage for the linux kernel and the folding program. I just thought it would be cool to run something like that.