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Cross Platform BIOS Flash Upgrades?
niko9 asks: "I am a Linux user who lives in an all Linux household. I build all my Linux boxes from components that I know will play nice with Linux. I was recently contemplating building a box with a Tyan Tiger K8W dual-Opteron motherboard, as the original BIOS did not provide support for the built-in Intel Gigabit NIC. Tyan has since released a BIOS revision, but the instructions for flashing the BIOS explicitly state that you need a Windows 95/98 boot disk. As someone who doesn't know anyone who runs Windows 98, nor do I own any copies of any Microsoft operating system, how does someone complete the delicate task of a BIOS upgrade? Wasn't Windows 98 recently retired? An email to Tyan's tech support has so far not yielded any response. When will motherboard manufacturers realize that upgrading your BIOS is better off being a neutral OS event? Does anyone know of any motherboard maker that doesn't require a specific OS to flash a BIOS?" A simple solution is to not fight the requirement. Windows and DOS bootdisks are readily available on the Internet, and all you need to do is grab a floppy, write the image to it, and put it in a safe place for such occasions. The gist of the question is still valid, however: what will it take to get BIOS manufacturers to make an OS neutral BIOS upgrade path?
I know how I did it. I did a search on google for a "dos boot disk image", found one, downloaded it, then used "dd" to make it. After that it was a matter of mounting the dos floppy and copying my new bios file to it. Reboot, run flash.exe, done.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Vote with your feet... if you don't like the manufacturer's apparently alligence to MS then go buy a different make.
Why couldn't they make a bootable downloadable iso image? Sure you lose a CD, but really, the last time I used a floppy it was just to upgrade the BIOS. I know OpenBSD has a really small downloadable iso for netowork installs. They could use a similar thing, but instead of formatting drives, and installing an OS, it could just boot and run the BIOS flash program. Easy, os agnostic, wouldn't require any work once the bootable image was done.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
I have a gigabyte ga-7vaxp. It will has a section in the bios menu that allows you to flash the bios from a fat formated floppy before the os boots. Very nice, if you still have a floppy drive (my current system is floppy-free).
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
try out http://www.bootdisk.com/ This web site has a range of bootdisks from win95 to win2000 and so on. If you ever need a bootdisk, I'm sure it'll be there.
They have images available for just about any OS you need.
Back to the original question about an OS neutral solution, it will probably happen when people start clamoring for it. It wouldn't take much for companies to put a disk image up that has freedos and the new bios image on it so people can flash their bios just by booting the floppy. The problem will arise though when the machine you need to flash won't have a floppy drive, then I guess it's time for the motherboard companies to create ISOs of bootable CDs with the BIOS upgrades.
What, me worry?
They could pop a tcp/ip stack and a dhcp client on a chip so you could do a network download/install of a new bios from the motherboard bios menu. This assumes you have some sort of NAT and dhcpd network and a built in NIC or wireless adapter. It's common enough that it would make life easier for a lot of people. Especially corporate environments.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
though, there's ways.
freedos might be enough too, booting from cdrom might be useful enough(and have the space for the actual update as well..).
and if you really just need to do it(the free as in beer group) then 98 and all earlier rescue/bootdiscs are easily found with with google.
though personally i got an aging 6gigger still connected that works as the boot device and has a fat32 partition for the odd bios/firmware upgrade/tweak.
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A bootdisk IS OS neutral. No matter what OS you have it will work. The real problem is when you consider something like Abit Flash Menu. It's an awesome windows app that automatically updates your BIOS over the net from within windows. Restart for it to take effect. I wish they had that for linux.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I'm not so concerned with OS-neutral BIOS updates. I can google for boot floppies.
The thing that gets me is that I've gotta use a floppy for BIOS updates. It's the only thing that I'll ever need a floppy for anymore (and I don't put those into any desktop machines anymore, for home or work). Why can't we just kill the floppy beast? Is it so hard to manufacturers to release updates on an ISO image (or something -- anything else!)? It costs me about the same either way (~$.75 for a floppy or CD-R). I could see the argument for floppies when AOL sent out their software on floppy discs (free media). But they don't anymore.
BTW -- why do they require DOS anyway? Do they just not want to recode their updaters? Do their coders just know DOS really well and they don't want to hire new programmers? Why can't they release on some stripped-down live Linux ISO (being free/free and all)?
--Turkey-Turkey
I'm pretty sure that a freeDOS boot floppy would work just as well as a Win95 boot disk.
.com or .exe files in real mode would suffice for your purposes. Since Win95/98/DOS doesn't have the direct ability to flash the BIOS, the only system services the flash utility might use are the file opening and reading services - which I believe freeDOS supports.
Most BIOS flashing utilities run in 16 bit real mode, and I believe the reason why Tyan specifies a Win95/98 boot disk is because it's the version of a DOS boot disk that most readily available. I'd bet that the utility would run just fine under DOS 6.0, or any other DOS.
And if you really must insist on using Linux, you might want to look up DOSemu, if it still exists. Last I heard, they're using the freeDOS kernel.
IIRC, the only system service which a Flash utility uses is the executable loader. I would think that any program capable of loading the
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Honestly, a dos boot disk has to be the most common and easily aquired items in the computer world. You can go to BootDisk.com and get your boot disk. And as far as having win98 to make a 98 boot disk I havent myself or known anyone that actually used win98 to make a boot disk. Again they can make one from newer versions of Win or they can download one.
So if a dos boot disk it the simplest and most common type of disposable boot disks for doing a bios flash than why change.
Side point is that most bios flash utilities and the required boot disk have NOTHING to do with win98. I have seen a trend on newer boards with some additional non-volatile memory onboard that copies the bin to this memory and after a restart to bios level only (read NO OS other than bios) it completes the flash overwrite.
In these cases often a '98 boot disk' will not work anyway since it cannot run properly with any memory managers present. In those cases what I end up doing is formatting a floppy fat and setting the option to make it 'bootable' which copies the lowest level dos system files so basically all you get is command.com. Then it can run the bios upgrade in an abesolute and controlled clean environment.
Suck it up! download a boot disk (there are hundreds of them out there) or make your own (there are even more tutorials on how to make your own I would wager) and get a 10 minute job done in 10 minutes instead of re-inventing the wheel.
Boredom's not a burden anyone should bear.
Check out these. They have a selection of bootdisks for different purposes. Unfortunately, you do need windows to make them as they come in some dinky VB exe that writes to the floppy instead of a raw image. Anyway, make one and make a few copies and you should be fine for a while.
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BootDisk.com
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Okay, first off, "offering an .iso of OpenBSD" is the most ridiculous solution I'v ever heard. Why not just ship an EEPROM burner?
.iso, I'm sure.
How about this: They require a DOS boot floppy because
a: These tools usually operate in real mode
b: DOS is real mode
c: DOS fits on a floppy
d: DOS isn't free
Oh, wait, DOS IS FREE.
STOP WHINING. Your knee-jerk reaction to "this needs DOS" is to think inside the box and whine about how MSFT eats babies and is a monopoly and nobody considers freedom important and TEH LUNIX ROXORZ J00!.
Just get a DOS boot disk from freedos, or any of the other DOS-alikes. That's what I do. It's useful to have around... Sure. In some Magical Future, we won't have floppies or DOS. And then you can burn a FreeDOS
My god, people, show a little flexibility.
C'mon, what is more neutral than dos? Espicially with win9x officially leaving the support track what other use is there for dos?
I want linux, down with MS is less than a neutral mantra.
How about MOBO makers supply you with a memory card from an old tandy... wait how about old NES cartridges, who knows what OS is on them.
My sarcasm is not meant to fan the flames but choose your battles man. Changing bios upgrade methods to a truly neutral format isnt going make anyone feel warm and fuzzy except you.
I used to think the same thing about getting rid of floppies, until I bought a machine without one.
Even though it's slow, and small, a floppy is the one common denominator among almost every PC in use today - except mine.
Floppies Just Work(tm).
I don't have to configure networking. I don't have to ask them to burn me a CD (some don't even have burners). I don't need ten different networking configurations for every possible OS version out there. I don't have to wait for a CD to finish burning(5 minutes...) when I want to send them a 10kB text document. I don't have to worry if they don't have UFS drivers for their OS *cough* NT *cough*. I don't need to worry about whether or not they've got USB drivers (or heck, even a USB port!).
Yeah, I don't like the floppy, but it's much more inconvenient living without it - especially if you've got to transfer files between work and home machines.
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Just get a win98 boot disk, and flash the Bios.. Linux (or any other OS) won't care, it will just detect the new hardware. (or updated) and then you can configure the approperate devices.
... about this sort of problem is:
An email to Tyan's tech support has so far not yielded any response.
nik09 didn't say how long it had been since he send the question, and given the holidays it's entirely possible that Tyan just hasn't yet gotten around to responding to his question, but its also all too common that when faced with questions like this one companies simply choose not to respond. At all!
That really pisses me off. I'm a paying customer, and while it may not be worth the manufacturer's time to actually support my moderately unusual configuration, the least they could do is send me an e-mail telling me that they're not going to help me! I can understand that supporting Linux users directly may not be cost effective because there aren't enough of us, but what does it cost to send a courteous refusal?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The recent ASUS Mainboards can flash from a fat formated floppy disk too. Just press ALT-F2 during boot and the build-in Flash Utility starts. (At least with my Asus N7N8X Deluxe - Nforce)
But I would be glad if I hadn't to build in a floppy every time I want to flash the bios.
They could make diskettes that don't use DOS at all. When they start executing code from the boot sector, the code would just raw read the ROM image from sectors x through y and then perform the same commands that their DOS based floppy does. DOS stands for Disk Operating System but in the case of flashing a ROM the only disk access needed is to read one file and possibly make a backup of the existing image first. Cramming DOS onto a flash disk is a waste of space and costs the manufacturer more than it's worth for the license. The only obstacle is their habit of hiring worthless microserfs who couldn't program "hello world" unless there is a wizard button to click their mouse on and do it for them. They need programmers who actually know what the PC is doing as it boots.
Have you tried this with FreeDOS? I'm not that brave.
What happens when you no longer have floppy drives? I have never flashed any of my Macs but now I'm wondering how I would do it.
I tried once to use FreeDos to flash upgrade the bios on a Tyan board. (I also did not have Win98 anywhere in the house).
Big Mistake. It vaporized my bios and I had to resort to unusual methods to recover the board. Fortunately I had 2 of the exact same board, so I was able to remove the bios eproms from both boards and copy from the good one to the corrupted one.
Freedos might be good for a lot of things, but bios flash upgrades isnt one of them...
Caveat Emptor...
--
John Cavanaugh
http://www.nu2.nu/
Of course his bandwidth has just been exceeded... Slashdot effect! Also he just came out with a WinXP Boot CD and it's rather popular.
Well, sort-of. Compaq is now providing Linux binary-magic-wrapped-in-a-shell script BIOS updates for some of their servers. I upgraded a Proliant ML530(G1) and it's RAID controler from within Debian/sid rather painlessly. It's not cat new.bios.bin > /dev/mtd0, but it's probably safer that way.
- RustyTaco
my P4B533 (always off, as it's an expensive space heater) has a feature called ASUS EZ Flash. it does exactly what you're looking for, it flashes the BIOS before any OS loads.
:P
'course i've been too timid to try it out
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
Years ago I used to use Win98 but switched to Linux. It didn't take me long to realize that having a dos or win boot disk wasn't a bad thing so I befouled a floppy disk and made one with my roommates computer. Used dd to make an image of it and have had it ever since. It's come in useful for BIOS updates even on a machine with no floppy drive. If anybody wants a copy just e-mail me and I'll get it to you.
Anybody hardware that may require a boot disk at some time should provide one. If they had to pay fees to MS something tells me an alternative would come along in no time.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
I Saw an article awhile back, but it was something along the lines of the person pulled their BIOS chip out of the computer While it was still running, and then put in another chip of the same specs, Flashed it with the BIOS of the other mobo, and then pulled it and put the original BIOS back in, and replaced the freshly flashed BIOS into the computer it originally came from. Search around.
(Score:0, Interesting)
Just use dosemu under linux, booting freedos to make a boot disk from the manufacturer's files and instructions. Then boot on the freedos-based boot disk. Simple and you can set it up from within Linux. An alternative to dosemu (which can be a beast) is dosbox which is a dos emulator that runs on any platform and can be used to make boot disks. Although it runs it's own version of DOS, it can be made to make freedos boot disks.
I also have been very surprised that bios manufacturers haven't been using freedos, especially now that Windows 98 is falling out of vogue.
now there's another TLA ready for recycling.
The gist of the question is still valid, however: what will it take to get BIOS manufacturers to make an OS neutral BIOS upgrade path?
No, it's not. It's a stupid question, based upon a stupid premise.
As someone who doesn't know anyone who runs Windows 98, nor do I own any copies of any Microsoft operating system, how does someone complete the delicate task of a BIOS upgrade?
You're either living in a spider hole like Saddam or you're lying.
You don't know anyone who runs Win 95, 98, ME, 2000, or XP who could whip up a boot disk for you? I don't believe you.
An email to Tyan's tech support has so far not yielded any response.
They're probably ignoring you, because they are just as sure as I am that you are trolling.
When will motherboard manufacturers realize that upgrading your BIOS is better off being a neutral OS event?
If the method that we now have works, why fux0r with it? If you can download a bios upgrade from the MB maker, you can download a dos boot disk image. You can download bochs and freedos and make your own boot disk.
I can't believe that Cliff let this question past and actually get posted. Please stop wasting our with with stupid questions.
Download a DOS boot disk image. Flash your bios. Shut the hell up and go away.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Why windows 98?
I strongly suspect that lazy technical writers neglected to explain why they insisted on a windows 95/98 boot disk. I strongly suspect that they needed a boot disk that left the computer in real mode. If this is the case then freedos, or any version of msdos or drdos would work.
So, somebody should mod the parent up.
For example, I have an old Dell which needed a BIOS upgrade the other year and had to go to the trouble of finding a Windows user to download and uncompress the disk image for me. If it have been available as purely a disk image, it would have been a non-issue instead of a black spot against Dell on my next x86 purchase.
If more users were to suggest using disk images instead of the MS-DOS/MS-Windows only executables, perhaps they would upgrade their process.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.