[geeks] Can I netboot...

[Michael Parson]

On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 05:56:57PM -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, Michael Parson wrote:
>
>> It's not really that your project isn't cool enough for us here, at
>> least, I don't really think that's all it.  The core of your problem
>> is that the networking stack in Windows 95 just isn't up to the task
>> you're asking of it.  Win9x just wasn't a server platform, even XP
>> Home would do a better job than 95.
>
> Given that IP is a peer-to-peer networking protocol, "server OS" versus
> "client OS" doesn't enter into it.  The big problem is that I don't
> think there exist rarp and rpc.bootparam servers for Windows 95.

You'd think that given the nature of IP, you'd be able to do it, but it
seems to be that the needed software doesn't exist for that platform.
You'd have to wonder why.  I'm guessing that the old Win9x versions just
either didn't implement enough of the stack to allow it, or you didn't
have access to that layer.

<snip>

>> Hardware of your vintage isn't going to run newer MS OSes very well,
>> and if you insist on sticking with them, you might want to give NT
>> 4.0 (sp6a?) a shot.
>
> NT 4.0 is a very fine Windows operating system.  3.5.1 is good, too
> and will be very speedy on a 90MHz system.  Software support for 3.5.1
> (w/ SP3 or later) should be approximately equivalent with software
> support for Windows 95.

Indeed, as long as you don't need any DirectX.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org