Stan Barr <stanb at dial.pipex.com> wrote: This seems like a good time to tap into the collective knowledge on this list once more... I have a question regarding Sun OpenFirmware that's been bugging me for some time now. I'm still struggling for a setup that allows a Sun to netboot off a Windows 9x PC (just get a bootstrap, no fancy NFS exports required). I'm making do with SuSE Linux 7.0 dual-boot right now, but that's not it. What I'm imagining here is to have a look at the code that is responsible for the netbooting operation of the Sun. Why does it have to obtain the machine's IP, that of the tftp server and what else via rarp? I'm by no means a Sun expert yet, but as I've understood it, you can define your own FCode commands and store them in NVRAM, so one could modify the boot code to use parameters stored in environment variables, either if a flag "use-stored-IP?" is set or as a fallback if there's no rarp server around. I've already got myself a Forth book and the FCode manuals from Sun, and I had a look at some commands with "see". "see" however often spits out hexadecimal codes in parenthesis amidst of Forth words and I've yet to understand what they mean; the manual addresses the problem only far enough to tell that this doesn't happen if words are defined with the "headers" directive. If somebody has been involved with FCode stuff far enough to give me some initial guidance, please contact me. Thanks in Advance. Yours sincerely, -- Arno Kletzander Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Telefonieren Sie schon oder sparen Sie noch? NEU: GMX Phone_Flat http://www.gmx.net/de/go/telefonie

Stan Barr <stanb at dial.pipex.com> wrote: This seems like a good time to tap into the collective knowledge on this list once more... I have a question regarding Sun OpenFirmware that's been bugging me for some time now. I'm still struggling for a setup that allows a Sun to netboot off a Windows 9x PC (just get a bootstrap, no fancy NFS exports required). I'm making do with SuSE Linux 7.0 dual-boot right now, but that's not it. What I'm imagining here is to have a look at the code that is responsible for the netbooting operation of the Sun. Why does it have to obtain the machine's IP, that of the tftp server and what else via rarp? I'm by no means a Sun expert yet, but as I've understood it, you can define your own FCode commands and store them in NVRAM, so one could modify the boot code to use parameters stored in environment variables, either if a flag "use-stored-IP?" is set or as a fallback if there's no rarp server around. I've already got myself a Forth book and the FCode manuals from Sun, and I had a look at some commands with "see". "see" however often spits out hexadecimal codes in parenthesis amidst of Forth words and I've yet to understand what they mean; the manual addresses the problem only far enough to tell that this doesn't happen if words are defined with the "headers" directive. If somebody has been involved with FCode stuff far enough to give me some initial guidance, please contact me. Thanks in Advance.

Yours sincerely,

I have a question regarding Sun OpenFirmware that's been bugging me for some time now. I'm still struggling for a setup that allows a Sun to netboot off a Windows 9x PC (just get a bootstrap, no fancy NFS exports required). I'm making do with SuSE Linux 7.0 dual-boot right now, but that's not it. What I'm imagining here is to have a look at the code that is responsible for the netbooting operation of the Sun. Why does it have to obtain the machine's IP, that of the tftp server and what else via rarp? I'm by no means a Sun expert yet, but as I've understood it, you can define your own FCode commands and store them in NVRAM, so one could modify the boot code to use parameters stored in environment variables, either if a flag "use-stored-IP?" is set or as a fallback if there's no rarp server around.