BIOS Flashing w/out a Floppy

[Kurt Wall]

Hello, all,

I wanted to update the BIOS on my computer but faced a problem: no
floppy drive and no DOS or Windows. Almost all of the BIOS flashing
programs require either a floppy or DOS/Windows or both because the
flashing programs run from DOS (uniflash notwithstanding -- see
http://uniflash.org/). Fortunately, smarter people than me worked out 
the details. Here are the general steps -- I'll write it up as an SxS 
this evening -- which presumes you have boot-capable CD-ROM:

1. Download your updated BIOS image.
2. Obtain a DOS boot image -- you can probably use one from the FreeDOS
   project, but I ended up using one from http://www.bootdisk.com/,
   boot98sc.exe.
3. boot98sc.exe is a self-extracting ZIP archive, so unzip it.
4. Mount the bootable image using the loopback device
5. Delete enough (unneeded) .exe files from the image to make room in
   the image for your BIOS update file and flashing program.
6. Copy your BIOS update file and flashing program into the mounted 
   boot image.
6. Unmount the boot image. 
7. Make a bootable ISO. "-b $HOME/tmp/boot.img" tells mkisofs where to
   find the bootable image to use and "-c boot.cat" tells mkisofs the 
   name of the boot catalog file that a bootable CD-ROM must have (it
   creates it for you). Thus:

   $ mkisofs -o flasher.iso $HOME/tmp -b $HOME/tmp/boot.img -c boot.cat

8. Burn the iso using your preferred burning app.
9. Boot from the CD-ROM and run the flashing program according to the
   maker's instructions.

As a tip, I suggest using a rewritable CD because, at least in my case,
it took several tries to find the right boot image. You might not have
this problem, but having a few rewritable CD media laying around might 
prove useful in the general case.

#ifndef DISCLAIMER
No guarantees implied or expressed. If it breaks, you get to keep both
pieces.
#endif /* DISCLAIMER */

Kurt
-- 
If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
at about 30 miles/second.
	-- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming