Bios flashing on a puppy - Solved!

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wimpy
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Bios flashing on a puppy - Solved!

#1 Post by wimpy »

I'm trying to find a way to flash the bios on a pup.(no floppy). I thought it would be easy to make a USB stick bootable with unetbootin, incorporating a freedos iso. Unetbootin cannot see the USB stick and suggests that it should be formatted to fat32. Unfortunately,, that' what it is. I got Gparted to reformat it again as fat32 wiping it in the process. No real problem, but still no change. Taking the stick over to a Win XP machine produces a bootable freedos stick straight away. That USB stick will not boot on the pup. I read a thread here about an equivalent method of producing a bootable USB stick but it seems to me that the stick created under Win XP must have its own MBR and OS. That being so, it should boot on any machine which supports first boot from USB. i just can't see why the stick will boot om the Windows PC and not on the pup.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated
Last edited by wimpy on Fri 28 Jun 2013, 09:32, edited 1 time in total.
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Burn_IT
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#2 Post by Burn_IT »

Flashing BIOS is not a Puppy thing.
You need the flash and utility from you motherboard maker.
As I've discovered trying to help someone with a netbook, most suppliers of Netbooks and a lot of others only supply a BIOS update that runs in Windows.

That can be quite a pain when your machine won't start because the BIOS has been corrupted. Most have a little known feature that allows a BIOS update from a small USB stick formatted as FAT (not FAT32) and it involves extracting the BIOS from the Windows executable and writing the correct files with the correct file structure to the USB. You then power off the machine and Power back on with the USB inserted and the correct combination of keys pressed. It reads the USB automatically and updates the BIOS.
Things are even more interesting when youneed to repair a corrupt UEFI .
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wimpy
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#3 Post by wimpy »

Thanks for the bad news! :) I found this a problem. Even trying to make a bootable Dos 6.22 involves a .com executable. I'll keep looking. Perhaps wine would let me open a DOS command window?
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Burn_IT
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#4 Post by Burn_IT »

What machine?
Mobo,memory, disk, USB?,Floppy? Operating Systems?
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wimpy
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#5 Post by wimpy »

It's an old socket A AMD Sempron 2800+. 1G 2700 RAM, USB 2.0, 1xfloppy (tested, works fine on my Lucid pup), CD ROM. Precise 5.6.1 is the only operating system..I am considering adding Freedos or Dos 6.22 or even Win 98 until I get the BIOS sorted. The mobo (Abit KV7) has full SATA capability with a later BIOS, and I have a new SATA 500GB ready to install when the BIOS gets updated. IDE drives, as of now, are a bit past their sell-by date.
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Burn_IT
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#6 Post by Burn_IT »

Create a Wakepup floppy which has DOS plus other stuff on it.
Remove all the Puppy control stuff from the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC files ,just leaving the basic DOS boot.

Copy the contents of the extracted folder to it, and you should be good to go.

I would look up the command line switches and makew sure it backs up the old BIOS.
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RetroTechGuy
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Re: Bios flashing on a puppy

#7 Post by RetroTechGuy »

wimpy wrote:I'm trying to find a way to flash the bios on a pup.(no floppy). I thought it would be easy to make a USB stick bootable with unetbootin, incorporating a freedos iso. Unetbootin cannot see the USB stick and suggests that it should be formatted to fat32. Unfortunately,, that' what it is. I got Gparted to reformat it again as fat32 wiping it in the process. No real problem, but still no change. Taking the stick over to a Win XP machine produces a bootable freedos stick straight away. That USB stick will not boot on the pup. I read a thread here about an equivalent method of producing a bootable USB stick but it seems to me that the stick created under Win XP must have its own MBR and OS. That being so, it should boot on any machine which supports first boot from USB. i just can't see why the stick will boot om the Windows PC and not on the pup.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated
Does it have a CD? Perhaps you can use FreeDos to do it?... (you can get a CD image, and boot it).
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wimpy
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#8 Post by wimpy »

Thanks for the replies. It does have a CD and a floppy. Do you mean a bootable version of Freedos (running in memory like puppy) or an installation disk? If the latter, I'm going to have to get another IDE HDD because during my testing 2 of the old HDDs have turned up their toes.
I'm not sure how to make a Wakeup floppy but I'll have a look.
UPDATE: @Retro TechGuy I downloaded a zip file which contained an iso image which could be modified with the bootflash files and re-isoed. I used wine to get a Dos prompt

Code: Select all

wine start 
and to run the makeiso.bat file.
This worked like a charm and I was able to get a FreeDos prompt and run the BIOS flash program.
Thanks. I really do appreciate everyone's help with this problem. I'll mark this as "Solved".
Last edited by wimpy on Fri 28 Jun 2013, 20:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Burn_IT
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#9 Post by Burn_IT »

Or download (MS preferably) Dos boot floppy image file (search online for one). It only needs to be a very basic one.
Then try this http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... ux-236247/
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

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