Boot Freedos 1.2 from PXE Server

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I have been scouring sources for a while and I can't quite figure out how to boot an old 486 with a new NIC via PXE. What I want to do is boot FreeDos 1.2. During the boot sequence the NIC looks for a boot over DHCP. Now, how I set up a bootable image of FreeDos via DHCP is where I am stuck. Half the battle was finding a modern card to work in this old machine that would allow me to get this far. I have Tftpd32 installed on my Windows 10 machine. How do I go about booting this 486 from either that or a Debian system? Pretty noobish when it comes to network booting. Many thanks.

Sean Connelly

Posted 2017-01-17T03:18:27.050

Reputation: 1

You're on the right track. Tip: You'll also need a TFTP server. (Conveniently, your DHCP server of choice looks like it will also support TFTP.) It looks like you're seeking a general guide. Rather than asking us to post one here, what happens if you use a search engine to look for these details? Are you seeking some specific information which is being particularly perplexing to find? (Your question is so general that it sounds like you may not have looked up what DHCP options to set, what to set them to, or how to set up the TFTP server for this.) – TOOGAM – 2017-01-17T03:22:52.643

Part of the problem is using the right language to search. You did help me find this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd128762(v=winembedded.51).aspx. So this solves my boot from DHCP questions. Where I am definitely stuck is how to create a boot image of FreeDos1.2. There is a juicy link to that question on this page, but I can't really figure how this applies to my circumstance and how to make the boot image of FD1.2.

– Sean Connelly – 2017-01-17T03:37:45.023

Answers

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You can easily PXE boot FreeDOS with Serva automated PXE server.

Please use the following ServaAsset.inf

;-Serva v3.0 Non-Windows Asset Information File 
;-Boot/Install:
;  FreeDOS 1.0/1.1
;-Tested on:
;  fdboot.img
;-Require:
;  -
;-Notes:
;  -
[PXESERVA_MENU_ENTRY]
asset    = FreeDOS 1.0
platform = x86
kernel_bios   = memdisk
append_bios   = initrd=\NWA_PXE\$HEAD_DIR$\fdboot.img

TIP: If you already have a working DHCP server in place (i.e. your Internet router) just set Serva in proxyDHCP mode; this way your DHCP server will provide the regular IP/MASK set to the booting client while Serva's proxyDHCP will automatically provide the PXE related booting info in a secondary DHCP transaction.

I'm related to Serva development.

Pat

Posted 2017-01-17T03:18:27.050

Reputation: 2 593

Asked: 2017-01-17T03:18:27.050

Viewed: 1 311 times

Active: 2017-01-17T14:10:04.917