boot disk dilemma

[MaD dUCK <madduck@madduck.net>]

so i finally managed to boot off the floppy disks and am now in the
debian installation menu, just short of installing the operating
system. i have a local debian mirror, so i'd like to install via
network (ftp) -- especially because i don't have the cds. i am using
the "compact" kernel.

i am dealing with three machines, and they all have different network
cards. one is a ne2000, one a 3c59x, the next a tulip chip. i would
like to install the network drivers, but they aren't on any of the
disks.

my headaches are with the driver-1.bin disk, which resides in the
compact directory -- how do i use it? it looks like a 512byte offset
gzipped disk image, but the debian installation program can't load it
- it waits for like 5 minutes before reporting that it "cannot mount
the floppy. stop."

what's the native method to configure the network cards during a
floppy install?

martin;              (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
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