On 30 Aug 99, at 7:04, Kurr, Martin wrote:

> I recently started installing NIC's in a few systems (using Intel Eth/Exp
> 10/100).  There is a small white cable coming off the board with a row of 3
> pin holes (female conn.).  Where does this go and what's it for?

  I think if your motherboard provides the "wake on LAN" feature, it will
have a connector for this cable.  This allows the PC to rouse from a "standby
power" state when network traffic requires its attention.

> Also, what does "bootstrap using int 18h" (et. al.) mean?

  The NICs are almost certainly socketed for addition of a "bootstrap" ROM
which would allow them to be used to boot the local machine from a server
disk image (diskless workstations *require* something like this, and some
corproate environments might choose to use it even if there is a local hard
drive installed).  [If I recall, INT 18H was actually associated with the ROM
BIOS in the original IBM PC -- the machine could bring that up if there was
no other boot device available.]


David G

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