BIOS Flashing Fears

[bigbeark]

OK, I confess to never having the guts to flash a BIOS. I've never worried about recapping anything, but I've always taken seriously the warnings that bad things can happen when flashing the BIOS.

So I've got a number of ancient candidates that I can experiment on. Various old P2 and P3 boards.

All of these involve use of a floppy drive, I've got lots.

I'm tempted to try the pure Linux method using DOSMENU program.
Other alternative to consider is using FREEEDOS. Then theres DRDOS or pure DOS. I find the instructions a bit cryptic, maybe some one here could shed some light.

I know modern boards have more user-friendly stuff, but I want to learn the old-school way.

I'm interested in fail-safe techniques of updating the BIOS. I'd rather not brick a board if I can help it.

I have a some ASUS P2B and CUSL2-C , an ABIT BX6 and a FIC KA-6130. I also have some Shuttle and QDI Slot1 boards, but finding the BIOS updates might be problematic.

All suggestions gratefully accepted!

[Scenic]

Re: BIOS Flashing Fears

get the "Driver Free Disk For BIOS Flashing" from here
http://bootdisk.com (use the second link.. the first one is the now defunct (or is is just that slow?!) abit ftp server)

open that tool and let it write the image to a floppy, then add the bios flash tool and the bios file itself manually and your should be good to go.

note that the flash utility will show you all the available commands (sometimes even with examples) when using the /? parameter (in DOS)

like "awdflash /?" from the command prompt.

[b700029]

Re: BIOS Flashing Fears

If you're not afraid of recapping then it probably means you can solder. In that case you can always desolder the EEPROM and put it in a programmer or solder wires to it to write to it if anything goes wrong. A simple EEPROM programmer can be built out of little more than a serial/parallel port connector and some discretes (if you have a 3.3v parallel port, it can be as simple as a few lengths of wire.)

[Uranium-235]

Re: BIOS Flashing Fears

I'm interested in fail-safe techniques of updating the BIOS. I'd rather not brick a board if I can help it.

get a UPS, and hook the target computer to it, make sure the floppy drive is good and the disk is good, preferrably tested or new

[Per Hansson]

Re: BIOS Flashing Fears

I'd ditch the floppy drive and make a USB boot stick instead, much more reliable than floppies...

Attached to this linked post you will find both the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool" and the Win98 boot files
Just make a USB stick using FAT32 (or FAT16 if you wanna be extra sure) and you will be merrily on your way.
It will require a BIOS supporting USB support though of course, but I find most computers nowdays does...

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?p=432257

[Scenic]

Re: BIOS Flashing Fears

It will require a BIOS supporting USB support though of course, but I find most computers nowdays does...

take a look at the list of boards in the first post ...

[Per Hansson]

Re: BIOS Flashing Fears

Jajaja
It will still make for a good "flashing stick" in his future
-When moving away from the "test boards" to more recent things...