Need boot ROM for Asus A7M266-D motherboard

[Jack Wathey]

A friend and I are hoping to build a diskless cluster of dual Athlons
using Asus A7M266-D motherboards.  This board is sometimes sold as
model A7M266-DL, which is just the A7M266-D bundled with a 3Com 100
Mbps NIC, model PCI-L3C920.  According to 3com, the chipset on this
little NIC is intended for use as an integrated LAN interface on
the motherboard.  Asus chose to put it on a tiny PCI card instead.

We need to boot these machines over the net using PXE boot.
Unfortunately, the A7M266-DL bundle does not include a boot ROM,
although the NIC has a socket for one, and the manual says that one
exists as an option for network booting.  The manual does not list
a part number for this ROM chip, however, and, after many calls to
3com and Asus, I have not yet found anyone who can tell me the part
number and how to get the boot ROM chip for this NIC.

We would consider an alternative NIC, but it would have to be
physically small, like the PCI-L3C920, because we will not be
putting these boards into conventional enclosures.  The grip of the
PCI slot will be the only mechanical connection supporting the card.
Also, it would need to be able to do wake-on-LAN through the PCI
bus, as the PCI-L3C920 does.  The A7M266-D has no connector for an
external WOL signal.  Our preference would be to use the PCI-L3C920,
IF we can find the boot ROM.

Has anyone out there succeeded in getting the boot ROM for the
PCI-L3C920?  If so, please tell me the part number and where you
bought it.

Any suggestions for alternative NICs that might work for us?  We
would also welcome suggestions for alternative dual Athlon boards
that support WOL and have on-board 100 Mbps LAN (other than Tyan and
Gigabyte, which we have already tried and found inadequate for our
purposes).

Thanks in advance,
Jack Wathey