It also worked with Windows 95 (many years ago).

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

It also worked with Windows 95 (many years ago).

Yes, that's what I'm hoping to get working on here as well, either for installing Windows 95 over the network (which I did similarly with a network client floppy disk) or having it run a Windows 95 environment that resides on the server.

This looks really cool! I never even knew this existed till now, look forward to seeing how it all works

By the time NT 4 came around, RPL was already on the wane. It'd been part of previous versions of NT, Lan Server (OS/2), and Lan Manager for years.

NT 4 introduced a specific Terminal Server version, and the ability to run programs remotely, rather than download a whole operating system locally to run reduced RPL's usefulness. Obviously they're useful for different purposes, though.

Also DHCP/Bootp are generally easier to use and included by default in many network adapter's firmware. I've used those a number of times to install operating systems on devices with no removable media, where they're located somewhere physical access is awkward.

RPL was killed together with Netware, as it was a feature and which was used primarly by Netware diskless workstation citizens. RPL is almost an anecdotal chapter in NT world, purposely made to compete with Netware in the disk less station world. As soon as DHCP/PXE, a better alternative, was available over a normal TCPIP architecture, RPL was finally displaced completely.

I, also, had never heard of it and, functionality-wise, it provides a number of advantages over something like RIS, which I think can only be adapted to deploy as low as Win98, but not < 95. It's quite well documented here, it seems.

I'm going to have a go at this myself. I'm looking to set up a gaming LAN, and had the idea of using one software image that I could deploy to 3 or more computers, all running DOS (Pentium II-class machines). In principle this would make the process of keeping the image consistent a lot easier!!