Thanks for your feedback, Steve. I'm excited to hear about the support that 3Com has for non-PCI-based NICs, and appreciate the clarification. I actually was familiar with the issue being PXE-centric rather than RIS-centric, sorry if that didn't come through in the article. Finally, I am also very familiar with the 3Com RISME utility -- in fact, my colleague Doug Toombs has written an article (in an upcoming issue) that focuses almost exclusively on this tool.



Best Regards,

Sean Daily

Sean Daily 1/30/2001 5:37:03 PM

Well written and thorough article, Sean...thought I might clarify some items from your conclusions:

1) "The PCI-specific support also means that systems with network adapters that use other bus types (e.g., ISA, EISA) and laptop systems that use PC Card or CardBus-based network adapters can't use RIS."

RIS is not PCI-specific. It is PXE specific...if a network card provides a PXE-compatible boot ROM, it will work with RIS. 3Com's 3C509 is supported, as are other network cards where open-source PXE code is available (check the Netboot, Etherboot, and LTSP projects).

Also, PXE technology has been available in PC Cards since at least July of 1999, when 3Com issued a press release regarding the manageability of the 3Com Megahertz
10/100 LAN CardBus PC Card - 3CCFE575CT. See
http://www.3com.com/news/releases/pr99/jul1299a.html. The 3CCFE575CT contains our Managed PC Boot Agent, which includes support for PXE. These do indeed support RIS installation to a notebook via a PC Card.

The 3Com® DynamicAccess® managed PC boot agent on disk (MBA) is a package consisting of multiprotocol network boot firmware and software tools that enable network administrators to deploy centrally- administered management applications to networked clients during their boot phase.
This disk-based boot agent supports a wide variety of 3Com NICs. Below is a link to 3com's website that further discusses MBA on disk.

http://www.3com.com/products/software/dynamicaccess/dyn_mbaondisk.html

The 3Com® DynamicAccess® managed PC boot agent on disk (MBA) supports the 3CXFEM656C laptop card and The 3Com USB Network Interface. This offers another alternative for mobile users who want to extend RIS functionality to their notebooks equipped with these 3Com products. Below are links to the press release for the 3CXFEM656C, and The 3Com USB Network Interface.

http://ca.3com.com/news/releases/pr00/mar0900a.html

http://www.3com.com/products/usb.html

2) "Although Microsoft has promised regular updates to the list of RIS-supported network adapters, no such updates have appeared thus far. "

We recently released support for more adapters for RBFG, including support for the extremely popular RealTek 8139 controller. This was provided to Microsoft in January, for inclusion into a WIN2K update and for Whistler.

3) "...RIS supports imaging only one volume—the C drive—to a RIS client"
This is only the case when using RIS to perform WIN2K Professional installations. Other imaging products oversome this, if provided via 3rd party software and is usually accessed via the "Troubleshooting and Maintenance" menu under the CIW.

4) "....you can't use it (RIS) to deploy other client OSs such as NT, Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me), and Windows 98."

While other client OS deployment is not natively supported, one can use RIS to deploy other OSs, including all of the ones mentioned above. 3Com provides a free utility - RIS Menu Editor- to assist in this, as well as technical papers that cover these kind of scenarios.

See http://www.3com.com/products/software/dynamicaccess/dyn_rismenu.html

If you or your readers have any questions on extending RIS functionality, feel free to contact me or our Technical Services dep't at lantech_support@3com.com.


Steve Marfisi 1/23/2001 9:03:38 PM