I tried the physwrite program but I cannot choose a drive to write to. Maybe it is they way I am doing it. I have a 7 in 1 card reader that the CF is in drive F so how do I pick a drive to write too?
It prompts for the disks that it sees, and the ones you want to use. You should see at least 2 disks, your computer harddrive and the removable drive...disk numbers start with 0, so you'd put in 0 or 1 depending on which is displayed as your removable drive. Are you following the directions as far as adding the image name to write when you run this in the CLI?
You can use the netinstall on a 4801. Configure your computer and netinstall IP settings. Then bootup the 4801, hit control-P on boot up and type "boot f0" at the prompt. Note that the Soekris com speed by default isn't 9600 so you'll need to change it to see anything if your serial is at 9600. The default is 38400 or 19200 (can't remember which).
Note: A lot of the new Sandisk flash cards pause for up to 3 minutes before they bootup.