Description:

Etherboot is a free software package for booting x86 PCs over a
network. In principle this could be any network technology that TCP/IP
runs on that supports broadcasting. In practice, the bandwidth
required means it's only practical over LANs and some WANs. Etherboot
is useful for booting PCs diskless. This is desirable in various
situations, for example:
- Maintaining software for a cluster of equally configured
workstations centrally.`
- A low-cost X-terminal.
- A low cost user platform where remote partitions are mounted by NFS
and you are willing to accept the slowness of data transfers that
results from NFS, compared to a local disk.
- Various kinds of remote servers, e.g. a tape drive server that can
be accessed with the RMT protocol.
- Routers.
- Machines doing tasks in environments unfriendly to disks.

A basic example of creating a boot floppy for a 3Com 3c90x:
cat /usr/share/etherboot/floppyload.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/start16.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/zimg/3c90x.zimg > /dev/fd0

A pxe image:
cat /usr/share/etherboot/pxeprefix.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/start16.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/3c90x.zimg > 3c90x.zpxe

A lilo image:
cat /usr/share/etherboot/liloprefix.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/start16.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/3c90x.zimg \
| dd ibs=64k conv=sync of=3c90x.zlilo

A dos .com image:
cat /usr/share/etherboot/comprefix.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/start16.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/3c90x.zimg > 3c90x.com

A rom image for a NIC:
cat /usr/share/etherboot/rloader.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/start16.bin \
/usr/share/etherboot/3c90x.zimg > 3c90x.zrom
makerom -i'3c90x.zrom 5.2.2 (GPL) etherboot.org' 3c90x.zrom