[NBLUG/talk] HP BIOS Flash

ME dugan at passwall.com
Wed Jul 9 20:05:01 PDT 2003


Jeff Hemminger said:
> Hmm, the instructions on the bios upgrade exe were to copy the contents
> to a floppy, and then boot my pc with the floppy, and type "flash" at
> the A:/

Well, you could take a dos formatted floppy and then copy that file over
to it and see if that works. What happens when that "upgrade.exe" is run
from a windows box? Do you get a prompt for inserting a floppy disk?

If that does not work, you can try to make a dos bootable floppy and then
copy this file over to it.

> I have flashed the bios on a different machine before, and it was just a
> matter of booting from the floppy and away it went, as I recall. This
> one doesn't do that, however.

If after copying the file to the floppy and booting from it, you find an
error, then it likely needs to be run and will write out information tothe
floppy, or it needs a boot floppy.


> ME wrote:
>
>>BIOS Flash methods are almost always based on images files or
>>image-to-disk applications that write an image to a floppy disk. That
>>floppy disk is then used to boot the machine and upgrade the flash BIOS.
>>Most of the apps from vendors of hardware are 32bit executable
>> windows/dos
>>program that write out the image to the disk.
>>
>>So, you may be able to get this functionality with DOSEMU (Never tried)
>>but with upgrading flash BIOS, I do not take chances. You can try using a
>>trsuted computer that has windows and use that machine to create the boot
>>floppy, then boot your laptop from that boot floppy.
>>
>>Is this what you were after?
>>
>>-ME
>>
>>
>>jeff at dreadidread.homelinux.org said:
>>
>>
>>>Hi All,
>>>
>>>I have an old HP Vectra P2 that I'm having trouble with. Basically, I
>>> can
>>>install an OS, but I can't boot it after the install. I get "L", and
>>>that's it.
>>>I'm pretty sure that's an "L" as in Lilo. Anyway, I've installed a very
>>>bare
>>>bones RH9.0 on it.
>>>
>>>I was talking with a sys admin at work and he said he'd run across an
>>>issue
>>>simila r to this and he upgraded the BIOS and that took care of it. I
>>> went
>>>to HP
>>>land and found the upgrade, an exe for Windows NT.
>>>
>>>My question is, is there any way I can upgrade the BIOS without
>>> installing
>>>Windows? Is there a comparable BIOS upgrade program written for Linux? I
>>>really
>>>don't know much about this, but I don't know what else to do but install
>>>windows, upgrade the bios, and then reinstall redhat? But that doesn't
>>>seem right...
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>
>>>Jeff
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>talk mailing list
>>>talk at nblug.org
>>>http://nblug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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