I have a bunch of Via Epia diskless clients that boot via PXE from a debian-edu ltsp server.
They have worked prefectly for years.
Suddenly, on Tuesday morning, all of them stopped working. They fail at the very beginning of the boot process with PXE-MOF. They do not request an IP address. It is as though they were unplugged from the network.
The only way to get them to work (so far) is to open them up, reset the CMOS, and then they will work for one or two boots only.
They have Via Rhine II onboard LAN.
I tested with an edubuntu ltsp server, and got the same result.Any other type of pxe client I can lay my hands on (laptops, PCs of all flavours) work normally.

Anyone have any leads?

Thanks!

nigel