[syslinux] [memdisk] remote booting diskless Mini-ITX system

[Salman Haq]

Hi,

As the subject suggests, I am trying to remote boot a Mini-ITX system. 
I am using PXELinux as the bootloader,
and Memdisk (2.11) as the 'kernel'. My ramdisk image is a hard drive 
image based on PC-DOS.

Two things go wrong during the boot process.

1. "INT 13 08: Failure, assuming this is the only drive" message

2. "Loading boot sector... booting..." message, but system stalls and 
nothing actually boots.

Here is the actual screen, hand-copied:

-----
Ready.
MEMDISK 2.11 2004-08-16 COPYRIGHT 2001-2003 H. PETER ANVIN
E820: 000000000000000000 0000000000000000A0000 1
E820: 00000000000000f0000 000000000000000010000 2
e820: 0000000000000ffff0000 000000000000000010000 2
e820: 0000000000000100000 000000000000000ff00000 1
Ramdisk at 0x0ec30000, length 0x013b0000
command lin: initrd=dosrd.img BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk
Disk is hard disk, 20160 K, C/H/S = 40/16/63
Total size needed = 1425 bytes, allocating 2k
Old dos memory at 0x9fc00 (map says 0xa0000), loading at 0x9f400
1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x0dc3
INT 13 08: Failure, assuming this is the only drive
old int 13:   f000ec59  int 15: f000f859
new int 13: 9f400008  int 15: 9f40027c
Loading boot sector... booting...
---

After the last message, the system hangs.

Any clues? Is this because I'm using a hard disk image? Should I be 
using a large floppy image?

Could this be an IDE controller issue? I do have a floppy drive on my 
system.

Other ideas?

Thanks,

Salman