Floppy drives are a thing of the past and CD drives seem to be on their way out as well. USB flash drives and higher definition optical disks have replaced them. Today, newer portable data technologies appear faster than ever to satisfy the insatiable cutting edge appetite.

I remember when floppy disks were phasing out in the late 1990s. My friend showed me his new Apple MacBook and how it was so advanced that Apple didn’t even install a floppy disk drive. With the obsoleteness of floppy disks and CDs, how then do we boot our computers nowadays? What if the Windows partition on one of my systems has a freak accident and my partition managing software is on a floppy disk. Well, I could do one of several options.

Boot Options and Computer Pantywaist Comebacks

• I could download a Live-on-CD distribution of Linux (like Knoppix) and burn it on a CD. But I’m scared to use Linux and it's too complicated to use!
• I could boot from USB. It's too complicated to make a bootable USB flash drive. It has not been standardized yet. Plus, my BIOS might not support it!
• I could burn a floppy image onto a CD and make the CD bootable. I just don’t want to do that! (What the heck!)
• I could boot the computer with my network adapter's PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) function. What the heck is that!?

Network Boot

Like I said in my Wake-on-LAN PHP article, I like to fiddle with the options in the system BIOS. Occasionally, I have to change the boot order to accommodate some of my hacks. I've learned that I can boot a hard disk, an optical disk, a USB flash drive, a floppy disk, a flash card (CompactFlash), and a network adapter. I was already familiar with all of the possibilities except for the last one. The network adapter option always intrigued me. “Boot from my Ethernet card? How novel!”

My curiosity finally got the best off me when I researched PXE this past week. Network adapter booting is an old technology. Integration with the BIOS became common in the late 1990s when Intel released its new specification for BIOS features. One of the mandatory features was PXE. In PXE, the computer can boot an operating system without any non-volatile memory like magnetic or optical media. After the CMOS POST test, the network adapter broadcasts a DHCP request. This request isn’t like any normal IP lease request. This special request appends some extra data at the end of the broadcast for PXE functionality. If a PXE-capable DCHP server does not respond, then the system halts or moves to the next boot order. However, if a PXE-capable DHCP server is listening on the network, it leases an IP address in its pool and it TFTPs the bootstrap (operating system) code. The code is placed in the host memory and is executed.

PXE DCHP-capable Server Daemon in Windows

Unfortunately, PXE works best with Linux, which I’m not very familiar with. I looked for a Windows alternative and I found TFTPD32. It's pretty decent. Usage of the program can be a little tricky though since there's not a lot of documentation. Basically, I followed the instructions on this article and this site. Below is my rough procedure.

1. Download TFTPD32.
2. Create a folder called "PXE."
3. Extract tftpd32.exe to the PXE folder.
4. Download pxelinux.0, menu.c32, and memdisk. Or, just extract files from a syslinux distribution. Place these three files in the PXE folder.
5. Move your floppy drive images to the PXE folder. For more information on these files, take a look at my virtual floppy drive article.
6. Create a subdirectory in PXE called "pxelinux.cfg"
7. Create a file called "default" in the "pxelinux.cfg" folder.
8. Edit the default file with a similar boot menu configuration file like the one below.
   PLAIN TEXT
   CODE:

   1. DEFAULT menu.c32
   2. PROMPT 0
   3. NOESCAPE 0
   4. ALLOWOPTIONS 0
   5. TIMEOUT 50
   6.  
   7.  
   8. MENU TITLE My Boot Menu
   9.  
   10. # NTFS DOS
   11. LABEL DOS with NTFS
   12. MENU Windows ME Startup
   13. KERNEL memdisk
   14. APPEND initrd=dosntfs.img
   15.  
   16. # FreeDOS
   17. LABEL FreeDOS
   18. MENU GPL Version of DOS
   19. KERNEL memdisk
   20. APPEND initrd=freedos.img
   21.  
   22. # Linux Floppy
   23. LABEL Linux Floppy
   24. MENU Linux Floppy
   25. KERNEL memdisk
   26. APPEND initrd=bootfloppy-utils.img

9. Run tftpd32.exe. If windows prompts you, allow the program to access the network.
10. Click the DHCP Server tab and enter "pxelinux.0" in the "Boot File" field.
11. Fill out the other fields as per your local network.
12. Turn your target computer on while connected to the network. In the BIOS, make sure that Network Adapter is first on the boot priority order.

    

The Verdict

TFTPD32 worked very well for me when I tried it. I was able to remotely boot almost any floppy image available. The only one that wasn't successful was the Linux floppy disk; I don't know why. One suggestion to the maker of this software, it would be ultra-cool if there was some sort of way that I could boot an ISO image off the network with PXE. But, I don't if the PXE specification would support that. All in all, I think it was pretty neat. I'll definitely turn to this first for my subsequent "floppy disk" boots. Since it is all electronic based (no magnetic or optical media), the speed surpasses any other boot method. Try it out! As usual, please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or suggestions below.

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