Installing Alpine on a VMWare Server virtual machine

create a virtual machine (linux, other 2.6 32 bit)
1. the vm doesn't need a hard drive
2. add a cdrom to the vm that points to the alpine iso you downloaded
3. add a floppy (choose new floppy image and give it a file name to create a fake floppy image on your machine)
boot into the vm
press f2 on boot to enter the BIOS
1. warning: this can be a real timing trick. I had to disconnect the cd and floppy and try several times to get into the bios screen before it started trying to network boot
2. change the boot order so that it boots from cd, then hd, then floppy (or whatever - as long as cd is first)
boot the machine
now run the following commands:
1. mkfs.vfat /dev/fd0
2. mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy
3. setup-alpine
4. lbu ci floppy

Now you should be able to reboot and it should retain your settings because they were saved to your floppy.