On Friday 26 October 2007, Marcel Janssen wrote: > I wonder how other fedora users upgrade their BIOS when they need it and > would be happy to hear about other creative and preferably simple solutions > (but leaving the floppy drive on my dusty shelf). I have historically used a Dell 128MB bootable USB flash key for this service. I grabbed HP's USB bootkey utility (google for 'bootable usb key' to find it) and did the deed to make it bootable almost four years ago. I just copy the new BIOS flasher and bin over to the USB key, boot from the USB key, run the flasher, and go. I do make sure to delete old flasher utility and ROM binary images before each use. This assumes, of course, that your box can boot from USB key; I have used this on five of the six iterations of my home rackmount box (the first board was an old dual slot 1 440FX board with dual Pentium II 266's that could boot USB; the other five, starting with an ECS socket 370 board and ending with a Tyan K8E sockey 939 board, have all been able to boot from the key) and two of my three work laptops (the key came as an accessory with my second laptop), both Dells. I've even used it to flash other things, like Adaptec SCSI controllers. -- Lamar Owen Chief Information Officer Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu
