First, get an empty Floppy. Compile a kernel that will fit on a floppy. Then, to make it boot from NFS:
Create a dummy decive:
mknod /dev/boot255 c 0 255
dd the Kernel Image to the floppy:
dd if=/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage of=/dev/fd0
And now use this line:
rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/boot255
I found this info on some site, but i can't remember where, so i grabbed it out of my bash history.
With this, we could get a bootable 2.4.25 kernel on a floppy w/o problems, and get it to look for an NFS server. However, we have other problems now to get it to work further.