Greetings!

I have a MITAC 8640SC LAPTOP with PIV 2.8GHz/SIS650 MOBO CHIPSET /512MB RAM
which i dual-boot with SUSE 9.3 Pro and WINXP Pro.

I want to flash the BIOS (INSYDE MOBILEPRO) because the old version does not support usb boot..

The problem is that the dvd/rw included in the laptop works only when it wants to work (rarely) and also the laptop has no fdd (i know it's stupid but was a gift..)

Anyway, i bought an external IDE TO USB case and an IDE DVDRW drive that works smoothly, but as i said before, the bios does not support usb booting.

I have made 2 bootable CDS with the files needed to flash the BIOS(the new .ROM and the flashing utility)

I managed to convince the stupid built in drive to read them and i truly booted (i tried with CALDERA DR.DOS and FREEDOS bootdisks) but there was nothing to do because the process hunged when i A:>flashit BIOS.ROM
It poduces a stack of HEXes describing the error and says something like that the memory manager failed..(??)

I am so pissed off that i decided to gamble a little bit and downloaded the WINFLASH utility that flashes the BIOS from iinside the windiws but it didn't work..

What can I do??? Does it matter that my BIOS is shadowed? i wanted to turn it off but there is no choise on the BIOS settings... (it is very minimal BIOS and i wonder why those guys in INSYDE call it "PRO"...)