[K12OSN] pcmcia network card

[Peter Scheie]

Long story short, you can't.  It's a catch-22: To talk to PCMCIA devices, you 
need the kernel to be already loaded; but to get a kernel, you need to have 
networking working so you can download one from the kernel.  The old wireless 
floppy had a kernel compiled for a very specific PCMCIA NIC (I forget which one) 
and it was an old 2.4 kernel I believe.  Newer kernels are too big to fit on a 
floppy.

One option is to boot from a CD, which will have enough space to load the kernel 
and necessary parts for talking to the NIC.  Another option is to put this same 
code onto the laptop's hard drive.  I think there are how-to's on the LTSP wiki 
for doing these.

As an aside, a year or so ago, I believe Bristol Wireless had proposed paying a 
developer to work out some code that would talk to some/most PCMCIA subsystems 
that would have allowed booting laptops with PCMCIA cards.  I haven't heard 
anything about it for a while, so it may not have gotten off the ground. 
http://www.bristolwireless.net/wiki/index.php/PCMCIABootGPXE

Peter

Om Dewa wrote:
> Does anyone know how to make k12ltsp (fedora core 6 inside) boot from
> floppy with pcmcia network card on an old laptop client?
> I have tried with ltsp 3 wireless floppy.img, but it was stopped when
> entered running level.
> Thanks...
> 
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