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The Death of DOS and BIOS Updates?
Mike Hicks asks: "The release of Windows XP was heralded by Microsoft as the Death of DOS. No longer is everything riding on command.com and friends. However, most BIOS update utilities -- whether for motherboards or DVD drives -- are still written to work under DOS. Certainly, a lot of DOS boot diskettes are squirreled away all over the place, but they are going to disappear over time. What will we be using in the next few years to update firmware? Do adequate non-DOS solutions exist now?" I would hope that maybe BIOS updates would then be distributed as disk images that would boot you right into the update utility, however more than likely there will be a Windows XP utility to do this. Here's hoping, however, that an OS-neutral solution presents itself in the future.
This is all very grand, except that floppy drives aren't guaranteed to exist in new systems. If memory serves, the 2002 computer spec put together by Intel and Microsoft actually recommends against their being there.
Ideally, there should be enough space for two copies of the BIOS to coexist, with the unused bank writable by a Windows/Linux device driver. If not, perhaps we'll start to see bootable miniature Linux ISOs capable of flashing the board. It would be practical, cost nothing for the vendors, and after all -- every computer deserves the opportunity to run Linux for a little while at least.
Of course, there is still FreeDOS. If I were distributing a BIOS upgrade, I would distribute a bootable disk image using FreeDOS. Then there are no licensing issues to work out with Microsoft, and you don't have to worry about what OS people are running.
Oh, and don't forget about OpenDOS, the now-free version of Dr-DOS.
I don't think that it's likely that the updater will ever run under windows. If that happened you couldn't flash your BIOS to solve problems that prevented Windows from booting fully. If anything changes with current BIOSs it would likly be a move to standalone updaters on a bootable disk. Also, Intel has plans to replace the stnadard PC bios with EFI which is already used on IA-64 and is available for IA-32 vendors. The EFI 'bios' has a shell, and can self update. Now that there is no DOS, perhaps the dependance on BIOS calls will go away, and systems can start using this far superior system.
Other ways to handle Updates..
1. FreeDos, comes to mind, the problem with an MS-DOS image disk that it actually requires a license from M$ to distribute that disk...FreeDos could solve that.
2. Don't use Disks, use Bootable CD's that eliminates the Floppy might go away issue.
3. Why not work around the issue completely, LINUX boot disk/CD with the BIOS Imagine on it.
4. I have an old SuperMicro board, you boot the machine with disk in the drive, it doesn't need system files or anything just the ROM image for the bios, hold I think its the CTRL keey during boot, it reads the disk and does its thing.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Actually, when you format a disk using WindowsXP's explorer, it gives you the option to make a DOS Boot Disk. I've tried this a couple of days ago to update my SCSI firmware, and it works great.
I have needed bootdisks in the past for various reasons and not had the facilities to make the right disk for the job. I have often used http://bootdisk.com to get the bootdisks I need for various situations. Although there are actual images available at the site, many are entrapped in .exe files... Nonetheless, it's been a pretty helpful resource for me.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
the kewlest bios update i ever saw was just a few weeks ago when i was looking to see if there were any bios updates available on a compaq proliant i inherited. on the compaq support site, i found a linux rpm bios update. i'd never heard of such a thing before and it was sooooooo easy. no need to boot off a floppy, or even start up in single user mode. just download, rpm -ivh and reboot.
why don't more folks do this i wonder? i used to hate compaq desktops almost as much as those packard bells and gateways. now i'm feeling the urge to purchase a couple proliants for work.