Sorry for tooting my own horn, but you guys really ought to check out
my little open source project at <
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/>.
I also provide a different boot floppy for each network card. But I
also provide a .iso CD-ROM image which contains copies of all of the
floppies. You can boot from that CD, then choose which "virtual"
floppy to chain-boot to get support for your network card. This is
not quite as nice as autodetecting the network hardware, but it is
much nicer (and faster) than physical floppies.
One of my users has created a HOWTO for using Bart's boot disk with my
system, and that provides autodection for the network hardware. I
will probably incorporate his work when I can find the time, or when
someone sends me actual patches.
I personally do not require autodetection; in fact, I do not require
floppies or CDs at all. I always install by using PXE to boot
directly from the network, and every PXE-compliant card can be handled
by a single DOS driver.
Contributions to the project are welcome...
- Pat