> Hello,
> 
> Has any one ever made a x86 floppy disk that, when booted, will in turn
> boot the machine `diskless' across the network using bootp/tftp/nfs/...?
>  This should hopefully avoid the need to burn netboot prom's for each
> ethernet card.

Yes, I have.  I am netbooting a 486DX/33 with a 3c507 card, off of
another netbsd box.  I tried to set it up with a 3c509, but I didn't
know how to configure the correct port, as ifconfig sure isn't
going to run in the kernel... :-)  I imagine I could change the
if_ep.c to hardcode the 'link0 link1' stuff, but I didn't want to
mess with it.  You probably will want to modify the boot/autoconf
code so it doesn't do the "insert filesystem disk" request and
sit there waiting for a keystroke!
(maybe NetBSD supports the ep0 'altphys' config file option like
FreeBSD?)

Anyway, it works ok, though it seems a bit slow on i/o.

-Andrew