Re: Need to buy Windows to flash a BIOS?

Jack Snodgrass wrote:

Both files fit on a floppy. I believe that fdboot.img is made to fit a whole
floppy. Once you use dd to copy it to a floppy, it is decompressed and you see the fifferent files and directories, command.com, for instance. But it does erase any previous file present on the CD, so that the flashing utility must be copied after, not before, as said in the instructions. There is still lots of space left after copying the utility, some 700k. Try it, you'll see it fits.

What's BIOS.IMG?

It's the thing your going to flash on your motherboard. In this example
it's BIOS.img. In my case, for an ABIT motherboard it was: KN8_19.BIN. You have to adjust the instrcutions as necessary.

Ok, I see, My bios_fl.exe file most probably contains contains the img file.

* cp -a FLASH.EXE BIOS.IMG /mnt/floppy/
* umount /mnt/floppy
* mkdir -p cdrom/boot

Here you make a boot directory in the cdrom directory on your HD. Most probably, if you have /mnt/floppy, it should be /mnt/cdrom.


... doesn't matter... it's just a temporary mount point. You could use
/mnt/foo or even /use/local/src/src/asdf. doesn't matter what you call it... what your doing is mounting the floppy.img somewhere so you can add files to it.....

instead of cp -a FLASH.EXE BIOS.IMG /mnt/floppy/ I ran

This -a option is also rather weird. I seems only appropriate for copying
directories:

-a, --archive
Preserve as much as possible of the structure and attributes of
the original files in the copy (but do not preserve directory structure).

Unless the BIOS.IMG file also decompresses once copied, if you have one?

cp -a bootcd_include_files/* /mnt/floppy/
because I unpacked the bios bin and flash utility I needed for my
motherboard in the bootcd_include_files directory.


* mv fdboot.img cdrom/boot/boot.img

Now, you copy fdboot.img as boot.img in your /mnt/cdrom/boot directory. From here on, there's no mention of FLASH.EXE and BIOS.IMG !


.... you mounted the fdboot.img on your loop back device ( virtualfloppy )
and THEN you copied the FLASH.EXE and BIOS.IMG. It doesn't mention it again because it is now PART of the fdboot.img.... it's in there....

Uhhm... So, you mount a file as a device, you copy other files to the said
device and then, they're all on the same device... ??? That's not the way it worked for the disquette. Why does it have to work like this here? Why can't you simply copy all the files to the CD?

* mkisofs -r -b boot/boot.img -c boot/boot.catalog -o bootcd.iso cdrom/

Here... I'm not used to engraving from the command line but, for sure, you

* bunzip2 -c fdboot.img.bz2 > fdboot.img
*
* mount -o loop -t msdos fdboot.img /mnt/floppy
* cp -a FLASH.EXE BIOS.IMG /mnt/floppy/
* umount /mnt/floppy
* mkdir -p cdrom/boot
* mv fdboot.img cdrom/boot/boot.img
* mkisofs -r -b boot/boot.img -c boot/boot.catalog -o bootcd.iso cdrom/
* cdrecord blank=fast
* cdrecord -dao -eject -v bootcd.iso

...since I do a mkdir -p cdrom/boot and don't change from that directory... the mkisofs works because it goes from the current directory... where.. cdrom/ is a sub directory.

I could have used: mkdir -o /usr/local/src/foo
mv fdboot.img /usr/local/src/foo/boot/boot.img
mkisofs -r -b boot/boot.img -c boot/boot.catalog -o \
bootcd.iso usr/local/src/foo

the last argument to mkisofs is just the name of the directoy you are using... you can call it what ever you want.... cdrom, foo, joe, etc.



* cdrecord blank=fast
* cdrecord -dao -eject -v bootcd.iso

"The last couple of lines assume you had a CD-RW media and wanted to blank it."

I would think it's only the line before last.

true... won't hurt on a non cd-rw media.


To tell the truth, the whole process is rather obscure to me.


bootable cd's are pretty slick... but they are not strait forward. You can't just copy some files to a CD and boot it. The bootable cd has a 'floppy' ... can be a BIG floppy... but it's still a 'floppy' image on it in a specific location. The CDROM specification tells the computer when it boots to load the cdrom and look in a specific location for a specific type of file. If it's there, it will load that
file and pretend it's a floppy. I don't have an a: drive / floppy but
when I boot this bootable cd... I can do a: and get an a> prompt. As far as the system is concerned, I have a read-only A: drive.

even though this is a bootable cd... you boot freedos with this, it ask you if you want to load the cdrom driver. You can say no
and you end up with just an A: drive ( that happens to be a cd ) If you load the cdrom drive, it detects your CD and then you get
an A: and a C: drive. It's optional if you want to load the cd
driver... in this example.. of the bootable cd.. you copied your
bios flashing stuff to A: so you don't need to load the CD part.


hope that answered some questions... I didn't write any of this...
just found the freshrpms.net page when I googled for flashing a
bios from linux. I've just been using Linux for a long time and know about bootable cds and loop back devices... makes perfect sense to me. ;)




better cd /mnt/cdrom before issuing the command.


... I altered the suggested script a bit to:

bunzip2 -c fdboot.img.bz2 > fdboot.img
same

mount -o loop -t msdos fdboot.img /mnt/floppy
Same

cp -a bootcd_include_files/* /mnt/floppy/
Another way of doing the same thing

umount /mnt/floppy
same

mkdir -p cdrom/boot
same

mv fdboot.img cdrom/boot/boot.img
same

mkisofs -r -b boot/boot.img -c boot/boot.catalog -o bootcd.iso cdrom/
same

#cdrecord blank=fast
As recommanded if you don't have a rewritable cd

#cdrecord -dao -eject -v bootcd.iso

I'm afraid you'll need this line to write to the CD...

Thanks for your help!

.

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