🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <01bd605b$515d4780$360d3acb@tool>,
Ben Szyc <jszyc@tpgi.com.au> wrote:
>I am running Debian and i have 3 Bull (3com) diskless workstations and
>would appreciate help on getting it to boot up.

Assuming this is one of the Bull Australia boxes with a 386DX20
and 8Mb in 8 1Mb SIMMs the ATO has been unloading via various auctions
of late, it should try to boot with '3Com EtherStart'. To boot it
off Linux you'll need to change the boot protocol to BOOTP, which Linux
can understand.

The box has one 27C010A EPROM holding the VGA BIOS, diagnostics, EtherStart
and BIOS.  You need to reprogram the EPROM and replace the EtherStart
segment from 0x14000-0x15fff with an etherboot image for the 3C503.
The latest Etherboot can be found at http://www.slug.org.au/etherboot/.
Etherboot contains instructions on how to generate a downloadable
OS image. Note that if you're planning to boot Linux on it, you'll need
a small 3C503 driver patch included in Etherboot to extend the range
of Ethernet vendor IDs the Linux 3C503 driver recognises.

Mine is now running as a remote print server using Ken Yap's most
excellent non-spooling printer daemon available on the Etherboot page.

There's a number of these being done for SLUG members at the moment.
Check out the SLUG mailing list at http://www.slug.org.au.

In article <01bd605b$515d4780$360d3acb@tool>, "Ben Szyc" <jszyc@tpgi.com.au> writes:
> I am running Debian and i have 3 Bull (3com) diskless workstations and
> would appreciate help on getting it to boot up.
> 
> thanx :)

These are ex-tax office machines right?

You may have some real difficulty in getting them to boot Linux. It will
depend on which version you have (the Australian designed 386 or the
original 286/386sx).  As far as I can remember, neither version had
the boot prom chip seperate, it was part of the BIOS.

The later version includes the circuitry for the 3Com Etherlink II card,
so it might be possible to get it to take an alternate boot prom, but
not likely.  I am pretty sure the boot prom code was integrated into
BIOS, so a new chip would have to be burned for you which will be
complicated.

The original boot prom is almost unusable outside of 3+Share, 3+Open
or Microsoft Lan manager, as it uses an old 3Com proprietary network
protocol.  Those original boot proms are also setup to boot DOS
and might be quite specific in the way they work.

This, of course, doesn't mean it's impossible, but it's a lot of
work.

dave.


-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
David Rubie                           "Your brother's dead.
Macquarie Bank Ltd.                    Keep dancing!"
drubie@macquarie.com.au                (Sean Connery to Kim Basinger,
                                        "Never Say Never Again").

: BIOS, so a new chip would have to be burned for you which will be
: complicated.

Hi

Burning an EPROM is easy. The problem that I see is getting the code to burn
into it! Is anything available under the GPL, or would you have to write your
own?

Cheers,
Alan

--

-------------------------------------------
"If at first you don't succeed,
 destroy all evidence that you tried"
     
   -- /var/lib/games/fortunes/platitudes
-------------------------------------------
Alan Turner (alan@suburbia.com.au)
-------------------------------------------

Check out Linux Journal January 1997 issue 33 page 24 "Booting Linux
form EEPROM". It has chunks of code and a fairly explicit description of
how it was done.

John Foster.

On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, Alan Turner wrote:

> 
> : BIOS, so a new chip would have to be burned for you which will be
> : complicated.
> 
> Hi
> 
> Burning an EPROM is easy. The problem that I see is getting the code to burn
> into it! Is anything available under the GPL, or would you have to write your
> own?
> 
> Cheers,
> Alan
> 
> --
> 
> -------------------------------------------
> "If at first you don't succeed,
>  destroy all evidence that you tried"
>      
>    -- /var/lib/games/fortunes/platitudes
> -------------------------------------------
> Alan Turner (alan@suburbia.com.au)
> -------------------------------------------
> 
>