johnb
you can network boot from a floppy( rom-a-matic?) its a website, put in the necessary info and a floppy image for your network card will be downloadable. I havent tried it, because PXE works great. My laptop sony vaio laptop has booted a cluster of 11nodes without hard drives, floppies,cdrom,mouse,keyboard,monitor,ect. Just the ethernet cable going in...
good luck
johnb