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?

Comments

Buy another board

[jasoncart]

Vote with your feet... if you don't like the manufacturer's apparently alligence to MS then go buy a different make.

Re:I'm curious,

[afay]

Or better yet, why don't they make freedos images that you can just write to a floppy? I can see the reason for not moving to some different os because the bios flash program would need to be rewritten. However, considering there is a free version of dos that doesnt need royalty payments, i would think they would be able to provide floppy images.

Re:I'm curious,

[Anonymous Coward]

SAVING a copy of the old BIOS as part of the flash process dosen't work with bootable CDs.

Re:Forget OS neutral, get rid of floppies!

[BlueBlade]

I'd just like to point out that the successor of floppy disks are NOT cds. If you boot DOS from a cd, you're not going to be able to write to the media and for flashing that means no BIOS back-up. CDs just aren't the solution.

I don't understand why so few seem to know about the "new" floppies, namely the USB memory keys. These things are smaller than floppies, blazingly fast (USB 2.0 vs traditional floppies anyone?) and all modern BIOSes can boot from one, either through a floppy emulation (el-torito-like) or even as a normal block device for very recent BIOSes.

Yes, they are still relatively expensive compared to a floppy disk, but they are getting cheaper fast. I just bought a new 128MB key for $25. It's not that bad considering you can carry it around on a keyring. Mine boots DOS and has all kind of recovery programs, such as partition magic, NTFS-Dos, various drivers, etc. You can also write to them without problem. OS support is good too. Linux 2.4 can read USB block devices, so can Win98 and up. You just plug it in your front USB port and you're set. And for those without front USB, a lot of keys come with a 3 feet USB extention (such as the Apacer ones) that you can use, allowing you not to mess around the back of the computer.

So yes, floppies are dead, but there are replacements already available that are incredibly superior.