Flash/DOC in NIC boot-rom socket

[Charles Steinkuehler]

I'm looking for a zero hardware/cable solution to hooking up some flash or a
M-Systems DiskOnChip to a "standard" PC (ie, not one of the nifty embedded
systems with a DOC socket already there).

The most straight-forward thing I've come up with so-far is to populate the
boot-rom socket of a NIC with some flash or a DOC, and write some glue
software (or customize the NIC driver) so the MTD software can talk to the
flash over the PCI bus.  Since most modern NIC's support flash boot-roms,
selecting the proper NIC (I'm starting with 3C905's) and flash/DOC part
makes the hardware end "plug and play".

So...am I insane?  Has anyone done something like this before, or have a
better idea for dropping some flash into a standard PC with no custom
hardware?

The goal is to replace a floppy disk holding configuration data in my
firewall/router systems, which currently boot off CD.  If I can get the DOC
working, and have enough time/patience to write some BIOS code, the entire
system could even boot off the DOC, instead of booting off the CD-ROM.

Charles Steinkuehler
http://lrp.steinkuehler.net
http://c0wz.steinkuehler.net (lrp.c0wz.com mirror)