12 Jan
2002
12 Jan
'02
3:22 p.m.
On Sat, 12 Jan 2002, Pat Finnegan wrote:
Yah, it still 'starts up' as much as possible.
I'm about to stick a
2-channel scope on that to see if I can decipher the connector. If not,
I'll hook it up to one of Purdue's $5k 'logic analyzers' eventually...
Have you tried connecting it to the network with a sniffer running to see
how it tries to load its boot image?
Here's my prelim analysis after taking the cover
off:
2) '286 Pheonix BIOS EPROM
3) Some 3com "6063-06 WYL" EPROM. I'm guessing the net-boot firmware.
4) Nat'l Semi 8390 ethernet controller IC
Well, from the looks of it, it has a typical 286 era bios with a network
boot rom as the second rom. The 839x series network controllers are very
common, and most everything supports them. Have you had a look at the
Etherboot project's website? http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/ Version 4.6
and earlier supports 286 hardware. If the second rom is indeed a feature
rom for netbooting, you could simply replace it with one you create with
etherboot and a programmer.
-Toth