I just created an linux image on 1.44MB floppy with floppyfw. com's router.
when i booted from this floppy on the computer (PIII, on which i created image), it booted. But when I boot from 386 machine , same flopppy showed gateway error. The booting didnt occur. how can i use it for 386 machine? thank you.

It could be that some of the hardware on the 386 cannot be detected, or isn't compatible with the OS.

Judging by the error (gateway error) it sounds like the NIC isn't working properly and it cannot get TCP/IP up and running.

I don't know why this would cause it to stop booting though. I would think it would boot up, and just not work properly.

Perhaps you could put in a more common NIC? A standard 3Com should be detected without a problem.

Have you tried freesco? www.freesco.org

I suggest you download version .27. It has worked like a charm every time I have used it. I have it in an old Pentium box that has been running under my desk without a glitch for months doing my home routing.

It is supposed to work on the 386 with 8 Mb of ram and has lots of NIC drivers and overall it is very easy to setup. For some strange reason the newer .32 version branch didn't work for me. It has many more features but it is somewhat experimental. That is why I recommend V 0.27 for you.


Good luck

Do you have any ISA slots on the PIII motherboard? AFIK, no 386 was ever built w/ PCI, and PIII hardware is just as likely to not have ISA slots. You'll need to build the image to use ONLY ISA NIC's or it'll never fly. That means knowing the IRQ's and IO address of the cards, and they have to be different for each one. Hardware autodetect won't work well on a 386, if it at all. Even autodetecting IDE HD's was/is VERY rare.
It may take overnight, but you'd be better off building the firewall image on the 386 to start with.
Finally, be sure that the kernel is built to run 386. If you compile for pentium, it won't work on a 386.