At 09:13 -0400 08/09/2004, Brian Hechinger wrote:

>looking at the chips on the backs of the boards, the "old" board is 
>an 8600 and
>the "new" board is an 8600 Enhanced.

>also, does the fact that the cache slot is missing mean anything to you?  the
>pads are still on the motherboard for the cache, but the plastic carrier that
>the module would plug into was never soldered on.

One of the differences in the 8600 Enhanced was support for a new 
(back in 1997) CPU module.   The new CPU module based on the Mach V 
PPC604ev CPU, has a 1 MB in-line cache on the CPU module which acts 
as an L2 cache.   Because the designers assumed that the L2 cache 
would always be on the CPU module, there was no reason to install the 
L2 cache socket on the motherboard.

However, other than the new CPU module and the updated ROMs there 
were virtually no differences between the 8600 PCB and the 8600 
Enhanced PCB, so they just used the old board and left off the cache 
socket.

My understanding is that there is a slight difference in the pinout 
of the CPU socket, but I have not confirmed that.   It is well known 
that the Mach V CPU cards will not work in any machine other than one 
of the Kansas motherboards (8600 Enhanced and 9600 Enhanced).

Unfortunately, I do not have any insights into your more immediate 
problem with net booting.   I hope this background information will 
help you know where to look for solutions.

Jeff Walther