[SOLVED] BIOS Updating - for Asus P5GC-MX/1333 board.Suggestions needed

Hello ,

I have a 2 years old Asus P5GC-MX/1333 Board with oldest version of BIOS on it(0312).
I want to upgrade to latest(0413) ,especially for hard disk supports and (if any) goodies.

This Motherboard has the option Press F8 to choose the Device to Boot.for eg: a USB pendrive can be booted this way.

Asus provides a DOS utility for BIOS update expecting in a 1.44MB Floppy diskette(I've no Floppy drive BTW!) called "AFUDOS" Which I've downloaded along with latest BIOS .ROM .

I want to know if any one tried updating using AFUDOS utility?

I need Help that to how to format USB drive and what all DOS Files are needed?
I knew of Freedos ,dosemu etc ,but Any lead ,for How to Format to DOS File System(?)

PS: I have no Windows OS.

Thanks

As much as I remember, mkfs.vfat doesn't support booting from this filesystem. The only thing I suggest you to do is write a pre-made image of a bootable floppy on your flash disk, by using dd. And afterwards you should be able to boot from your pendrive the same way as booting from a floppy


PS: Also I would suggest you to not change anything in BIOS, as long as it works good for you. If you got some bugs or hardware requiements that need the upgrade, do it. Otherwise leave it as it is

This is one way...

For AFUDOS you can use this.
http://www.bootdisk.com/flash.htm

Be careful about what you include to be flashed. There may be detailed instructions as a README in the BIOS file that you download.

According to the motherboard manual, you can use the AFUDOS or the Award BIOS flash utility. See Chapter 2 in the manual for exact instructions, available from the Asus support site.

Hi,

'Universal BIOS Flash programmer for Linux, BSD and more' would be one place to look at that includes the links for 'coreboot' & 'Flashrom'.


The above links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

I'm on a Debian 64-bit System.I hope this will not be a deterrent ?
--
I'm following this howto:
http://poderigiacomo.netsons.org/blog/?p=51

^I've downloaded latest AFUDOS utility from AMI Website to use with the fdos floppy image.and Even made the ISO using genisoimage(it spewed off some message about input-character is assumed as utf8 or so.cp437 is for "real" DOS,I presume).

Now ,the Other difficulty ,I'm facing is ,I've DVDRW drive;but it is not used for years that ,it fails to read CD's

But ,I've Debian with Grub2 Bootloader.I saw this link and Hope to boot this way:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_U...ing_using_GRUB
--
will update.Correct Me ,If I'm going the Wrong Way.(USB +F8 is the last option BTW)

Thanks.

The manual...

If I read the motherboard manual entry correctly, you can use a USB flash drive to flash with the the Award flash utility.

The USB stick should be formatted as FAT/VFAT and must contain nothing but the contents of the BIOS download. No USB having the U3 utility will work.

If you are flashing from the oldest to the newest BIOS, you might consider first revising up to an intermediate version number.

This might be a way...

If your system does not have the Award flash utility under BIOS revision 0312, you might try this approach, booting to DOS on a USB flash drive to run AFUDOS.

http://blogs.sun.com/dragonfly/entry...sb_flash_drive

This assumes a Windows system, but illustrates the principle.

Originally Posted by dracuss As much as I remember, mkfs.vfat doesn't support booting from this filesystem. The only thing I suggest you to do is write a pre-made image of a bootable floppy on your flash disk, by using dd. And afterwards you should be able to boot from your pendrive the same way as booting from a floppy PS: Also I would suggest you to not change anything in BIOS, as long as it works good for you. If you got some bugs or hardware requiements that need the upgrade, do it. Otherwise leave it as it is

just my 2 cents but i agree with dracuss, as a computer professional i've seen on at least one occasion the results of a failed flash and it's not pretty, every time you flash a bios you run the risk of bricking the motherboard permanently so as the old adage goes if it ain't broke why fix it?
edit:but if you must i would go to www.bootdisk.com, download a dos boot floppy image (preferably the driverless boot disk http://k7jo.de/tools/drdos/drdflash.exe ), extract the raw disk image, mount it with sudo mount -o loop 'image' /media/floppy, place the flash utility/image, unmount the disk and either copy it to a usb disk or use k3b (or similar burning utility) to burn the image to the boot sector of a blank cd

I agree with frieza here, be very careful when flashing the BIOS, you can easily permanently brick your system. I recommend using only a DOS boot disk, either CD or floppy (and maybe the DOS boot / flash option on Gigabyte mobos, basically a built-in DOS boot option). I've never used a USB drive to do this, it might be possible, but I can't recommend it.

If you are not having any issues that are exactly addressed by the bios update then do not do it.

When you use the usb to re-flash the MB has a basic OS that can find the file in the root directory. That is all you usually have to do is download the file and save it to a fat formatted usb flash and reboot and select the utility.

With linux...

http://wiki.fdos.org/Installation/BootDiskCreateUSB

I tried with Floppy Image(FDOEM from fdos) with Afudos utility.I booted fdos floppy image with grub2 using syslinux utility memdisk.

it all went fine for backing up image(by issuing afudos /oOLDBIOS1.rom).but ,the old bios image is stored only in the cache ,I presume-because ,If I reboot ,the Old Bios Backup is lost

Is there a way that memdisk booted freedos images can back up old bios?

Hello ,

I've My Luck with flashrom utility and flashed to the latest version of BIOS.It is simple and easy(assuming your Hardware is supported).Great tool.It allows current BIOS back up too.
PS:I used flashrom-0.9.2-r1043(compiled debian package from flashrom sources).

I had tried Afudos Utility from freedos bootdisk booted with syslinux "memdisk" successfully with Grub2 Bootloader.I tested afudos utility from freedos for backing up current bios and it worked.Just that I was wary of DOS utility flashing BIOS .... it'll brick My Motherboard for Eternity :P

Regards,
DC

I disagree, I've never had a DOS flashing util brick any system. It's the Window$-based utils that do this.

I suppose flashrom is ok to use too, if it supports your hardware.