If you do in fact need to upgrade the BIOS, and you can get the bios update on a floppy disk image file (more on that later) it's easy to make a bootable CD using it (what's called an El Torito bootable CD) using mkisofs.
Let's say you have the bootable floppy image file named floppy.img in a directory named floppydir (with nothing else in the directory). The following command will make a bootable CD image file named bootcd.iso:
mkisofs -o bootcd.iso -b floppy.img floppydir
You can them burn that bootcd.iso to a CD just as you would with any CD image file. Booting from that CD will give you an A: prompt and you will see the contents of the original floppy image.
As far as getting the update in an image file you can get the 'non-packaged' bios updater from dell (this is just the executable bios updater). Then find any minimal dos boot floppy image. You can add the bios updater to that image by mounting it (as root) to any empty directory using the loop option:
mount floppy.img /path/to/dir -o loop
...and then copy the file:
cp bios_whatever.exe /path/to/dir
...then unmount it as root with:
umount /path/to/dir
Hope this helps. This stuff is good to know with floppys becoming increasingly rare (especially on Dells).
The BIOS "expects" the key to emulate a hard drive vs. a zip or floppy device. I have several keys some work, some do not. All the keys from Dell will work provided they are formated properly with a bootable operating system. The OS needs to be DOS or possibly FreeDOS for the BIOS update program to work. Don't use any memory managers, just make things as simple as possible.
I hope this helps point you in the right direction.
tdexter
63 Posts
0
December 9th, 2004 19:00
Let's say you have the bootable floppy image file named floppy.img in a directory named floppydir (with nothing else in the directory). The following command will make a bootable CD image file named bootcd.iso:
mkisofs -o bootcd.iso -b floppy.img floppydir
You can them burn that bootcd.iso to a CD just as you would with any CD image file. Booting from that CD will give you an A: prompt and you will see the contents of the original floppy image.
As far as getting the update in an image file you can get the 'non-packaged' bios updater from dell (this is just the executable bios updater). Then find any minimal dos boot floppy image. You can add the bios updater to that image by mounting it (as root) to any empty directory using the loop option:
mount floppy.img /path/to/dir -o loop
...and then copy the file:
cp bios_whatever.exe /path/to/dir
...then unmount it as root with:
umount /path/to/dir
Hope this helps. This stuff is good to know with floppys becoming increasingly rare (especially on Dells).
Tom
Alessio.Signori
3 Posts
0
December 13th, 2004 15:00
To make the USB KEY bootable you can use one of the many software that you can find on internet. Just look with Google, and you'll find it.
ToddR
3 Posts
0
January 7th, 2005 17:00