Alternatively, if your client intended to work in NT shop
you could boot image (kernel + minimal root file system)
from NT (ws or server). In our case TME's mobo doesn't
have nic's eprom socket so we wrote bootprom loader into
flash as a bios extension. The whole thing works like that:
- bootp client gets TCP/IP parameters and image name;
- tftp client downloads image;
- image is decompressed into ram;
- OS boots, starts networking;
- remote file system (rfs) gets mounted over SMB;
- X starts from rfs;
- Java starts from rfs;
- Java application starts from rfs.
Our Java app isn't really small (a few hundred classes, n* MB of graphics),
yet all we need is ~10MB compressed file (1.5MB bootable image and 8.5MB
X, Java and Java app). All runs on i486/586, 32MB ram, diskless,
keyboardless,
touch, no swap.
Regards,
Pavel.
