I did BIOS flash with bootable CD-R

[loafbred]

It may be common knowledge that this can be done, but I just found out about it today and thought somebody else might benefit from it. The Epox 8K9AI I bought last week has a pin missing from the floppy port. I only wanted to hook up a floppy long enough to flash to the latest BIOS, and when I found the pin missing, I didn't want to remove and return an otherwise good board. I did a search on Google and found a message in some odd forum where a guy made a bootable floppy with the flash files, then used Nero to make a bootable CD, burning the files from the floppy. Using the standard Epox bootable floppy routine (but from a CD) wouldn't flash because it wanted to save the old BIOS by default. Luckily one of the files included on the disk was the old standby AWARDFLASH.EXE. I ran that, which gives you the option to save, but doesn't require it, and it flashed without a problem.

 

[jaeger66]

Been doing this for years.

One piece of advice though, I'd suggest copying the BIOS file and utility to a RAMDRIVE before flashing. A standard Windows boot CD should create one for you.

 

[onelin]

word. I'm all for no more floppy drives

 

[hdeck]

wow i did not know this. i think it's time to trash the floppy drive that is collecting dust in my closet.

 

[Lord Evermore]

A lot of people don't think of this.

This is why floppies are still useful. How many people would feel like they were screwed if they needed to boot from a floppy?

 

[Jesta]

Just a thought but I seem to remember that all the recent board I have bought have a pin missing on the floppy port. Isn't this standard? Just an observation.

 

[Markfw]

Duh. I make $200 an hour(under contract, only $75 regular), and a floppy cost $11 locally. Then I hook it up takes 2 min, flash and done. I will stick with the floppy for now......

 

[ImMersion]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Duh. I make $200 an hour(under contract, only $75 regular), and a floppy cost $11 locally. Then I hook it up takes 2 min, flash and done. I will stick with the floppy for now......

What the heck do you do for a living?? Selling crack while workin on a pc? j/k

 

[loafbred]

Originally posted by: jaeger66


One piece of advice though, I'd suggest copying the BIOS file and utility to a RAMDRIVE before flashing. A standard Windows boot CD should create one for you.

Thanks for the tip - sounds like very good advice.

 

[loafbred]

Originally posted by: Jesta
Just a thought but I seem to remember that all the recent board I have bought have a pin missing on the floppy port. Isn't this standard? Just an observation.

I tried two floppy drives on it, without any success, before I thought to compare it to the port on my 8K5A2. My board had the pin which is missing on the 8K9AI. It was on the bottom row, approx. third from the left.

 

[Lord Evermore]

The missing pin doesn't mean anything, it's never been used. It's mainly just a "key" thing, to show you how to orient the cable if you don't have a notched one.

 

[Jeff7]

A sort of OT question here - every time I want to make a boot CD with Nero, it asks for a bootable floppy. Maybe I'm missing something here; just seems weird that to bypass the floppy drive, you need a floppy disk.
And I like the read AND write capability of the floppy in DOS - Save new BIOS? Yes.
Oops, all my drives are NTFS, and don't exist for DOS, and the CD is read-only, right? What do you do then if the new BIOS makes the system spit up on your shoulder?

 

[ShowdOWN]

i have everything cd bootable.
from win98 startup, memtest, ghost and a few others.

 

[loafbred]

Back to the missing pin thing - I remember seeing a warning in Device Manager about the floppy controller before I disabled it in BIOS, so I'm guessing that's what is dead. Something is definitely broken on the board.