Bios flashing w/fed4_64

[Ian Malone]

Gilboa Davara wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 16:13 +0000, Ian Malone wrote:
> 
>>John Summerfied wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Gilboa Davara wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I doubt it. I've yet to see a Linux flash utility. (Being tied to a
>>>>certain BIOS/MB combo, I doubt that we will ever see one)
>>>>Most flash utilities either use DOS (99%) or both Windows and DOS (~1%).
>>>>
>>>>Gilboa
>>>>
>>>
>>>I've got one or to mobos that can read direcly from floppy. (I'm not 
>>>sure they actually have floppy drives attached, several of my machines 
>>>haven't).
>>>
>>>Sometimes (often?) freedos will do the job; I think Dell and/or HP 
>>>uses Freedos regardless of what their actual instructions say.
>>>
>>
>>AOL: my last two Gigabyte MBs have been able to update the bios directly 
>>from
>>a file on a floppy without Win / DOS (and save the current bios directly 
>>too). One
>>of the reasons my next MB will be a Gigabyte.
>>

> 
> 
> HUH?
> I just updated my new K8NS BIOS and it requires the same old (Free)DOS
> boot.
> They just help you by giving you a default autoexec.bat file, saving you
> the need to remember the flash command line options. (And BIOS image
> name).
> 
> Gilboa
> 
> 
Well, it's on my now elderly GA7 DXE (socket A), a bios based update
called Q-Flash. From the manual:

A. What is Q-Flash Utility?
Q-Flash utility is a pre-O.S BIOS flash utility enables users to
update its BIOS within BIOS mode, no more fooling around any OS.
(sic)

The previous motherboard to that was an almost identical GA7 DX+,
which had to be replaced after attempting to remove a northbridge
heatsink which I thought was bounded with epoxy but was actually
thermal tape[1]. Maybe they've stopped using it?

[1] For anyone thinking of trying this; if it's thermal tape,
twisting will get it off. Try that /first/.
-- 
imalone ♘