This is a 30 second guide to making an Etherboot CD-ROM.  There is not much 
advantage to a CDR versus a Floppy image; however, there are times when
a CD image is more convenient than a floppy.  You have to be the judge
for the need of a CD versus a floppy. 


First, you will need to create a working floppy image for your particular
network card.  I highly recommend http://www.rom-o-matic.net.  Select 
"Floppy Bootable ROM Image (.lzdsk)" as the Output format. 

Save this file to disk and then create a bootable floppy per Rom-O-Matic's
instructions (basically, cat your-saved-file.img > /dev/fd0). 

Next, we need a staging area for the CDR. 

  $ mkdir staging
  $ cd staging
  $ mkdir boot

The boot directory will hold our El Torrito boot image and catalog. 
You will now need to create a boot image for the CD.  This will read
the actual floppy disk and create a 1.44Kb file. There may be an easier
way to create the needed boot.img directly from the downloaded
Etherboot lzdsk file, but generally you will need to test the 
downloaded image on a floppy anyways. 

  $ dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot/boot.img bs=10k count=144

Next, use mkisofs to create an El-Torrido compatable ISO image: 

  $ mkisofs -b boot/boot.img -c boot/boot.catalog -o etherboot.iso .

You now have an ISO image that can be burned using your favorite CD-
Writing Software. 


----
Jason Cater
jason@ncsmags.com