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ytree seems to still be in development: http://www.han.de/~werner/ytree.html

There is a port running on Linux: http://www.han.de/~werner/ytree.html

You put the card in, it simulates a hard drive during boot, but can't be "altered". Usually, it'd go after a specially-configured Novell server to load apps.

Now that you mention it I remember a similar project in the Etherboot distribution - you can build a "FlashCard" which resides in an ISA slot, and contains an EEPROM that can be flashed with a BootROM. It's meant for testing Etherboot before you burn it onto 20 EPROM chips but it'll work for anything that wants to take control after the motherboard BIOS, in the same manner as IDE controllers and so on get called to do their thing. My knowledge of prioritization and contention is sketchy here, tho... whoever goes first wins the privelege of booting or what?

• Etherboot
• Netboot

The differences between the two projects include 1) size of the images, 2) number of supported NICs, and 3) available features. Nonetheless, they aim for compatibility between each other and it is often worthwhile trying both and finding out which one works better for your particular configuration. (As a co-author of Etherboot, I am somewhat biased).

Rather than asking your questions on Slashdot you probably stand a better changes getting answers to your technical questions, if you subscribed to the combined mailing list for the two projects. There also is an archive of all the messages ever posted on this list.

Both Etherboot and Netboot allow to load the Boot Prom image from floppy disk while you are still testing your environment. Once everything works, you can decide to burn an EPROM and eliminate the need for the floppy disk. Of course, with modern NIC cards things are easier, because some of them already include a FlashPROM.

Another very promising project is NILO. It has originally been started by one of the Etherboot authors and it is currently being written from scratch under commercial sponsorship (the entire project will is GPL'd). See the home page for all the details.

Eventually NILO will probably obsolete Etherboot and Netboot for everything but very special purposes. It currently is under active development and while we would appreciate more alpha testers it isn't really very useable for real-world applications. There will be announcements on Freshmeat about the progress of this project.

The differences between the two projects include 1) size of the images, 2) number of supported NICs, and 3) available features. Nonetheless, they aim for compatibility between each other and it is often worthwhile trying both and finding out which one works better for your particular configuration. (As a co-author of Etherboot, I am somewhat biased).

Rather than asking your questions on Slashdot you probably stand a better changes getting answers to your technical questions, if you subscribed to the combined mailing list for the two projects. There also is an archive of all the messages ever posted on this list.

Both Etherboot and Netboot allow to load the Boot Prom image from floppy disk while you are still testing your environment. Once everything works, you can decide to burn an EPROM and eliminate the need for the floppy disk. Of course, with modern NIC cards things are easier, because some of them already include a FlashPROM.

Another very promising project is NILO. It has originally been started by one of the Etherboot authors and it is currently being written from scratch under commercial sponsorship (the entire project will is GPL'd). See the home page for all the details.

Eventually NILO will probably obsolete Etherboot and Netboot for everything but very special purposes. It currently is under active development and while we would appreciate more alpha testers it isn't really very useable for real-world applications. There will be announcements on Freshmeat about the progress of this project.

Check out Gero's netboot pages It features a complete system to boot any intel machine with bootp/tftp. If you don't have access to an eprom writer for your ethernet cards, it also works with a floppy. Allows you to network boot MS/DOS (also WinSucks9x) and of course Linux

Lots of embedded 'biscuit tin' boards now have a net boot option that you can blow into the main flash bios, e.g. http://www.aaeon.com/html/pcm5890.htm also http://www.advantech-usa.com /epc/products/pcm5862E.htm

There is a problem that these images are usually OS and chipset specific, but the netboot (http://www.han.de/~gero/netboot/) package by Gero Kuhlmann may provide a route forward if a way can be found to blow a netboot image into the flash.

The advantage would be 'cloned' hardware with no extra parts at all. You could have a rack full of these things booting from a central bootserver.

Interestingly the netboot package contains instructions for building a FlashCard that could be used in any PC.