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Flashing a bios on older hardware.

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First post, by Bancho

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Hi All, expanding on from the 'Bought these (retro) hardware today' thread, i recently got an Epox 8KTA+ motherboard and am stuck with how to flash the bios. I do have a floppy drive but unfortunately no floppy disk's. How do people go about flashing bios's on older hardware without floppy disk? I have a Win 98SE CD that i can boot to MS Dos with CD Driver loaded. If i was to burn a CD with the required BIOS image and awd flash exe would this be safe to do?

Reply 1 of 9, by agent_x007

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Probably, BUT that is a waste of CD/DVD.
Atho... IF U have a CD-RW or DVD-RW...

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Reply 2 of 9, by Bancho

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Today a CD is cheaper to buy than a Floppy disk hahaha and a lot easier. I have numerous CDR's

Reply 3 of 9, by FaSMaN

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I use a Hardware eeprom programmer, so I just pull the eeprom and reprogram it.

You can try Hirens boot CD aswell it has a Dos mode that maps USB drives...

But if your going to do a few motherboards I would totally buy a programmer it makes your life a thousand times easier

Reply 4 of 9, by Jo22

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I use an eeprom programmer, like FaSMaN.
But sometimes when the flash chip is soldered or too tiny, I do boot from flash media. Be it an USB pen drive or a CF card..
And I also have some floppies in my drawer in case this doesn't work.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 6 of 9, by konc

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If the machine to be updated is operational and already has an OS on a FAT/FAT32 formatted HDD, this is easy:
-Copy the necessary files (.exe and bios) using any way to the hard disk. A CD-RW disc, over network, a USB flash drive, by connecting the hard disk on a modern system (directly or with a USB case)
-Boot from a windows 9x cd (clean boot, bypassing everything)
-Switch to the hard disk and just run the update

Reply 7 of 9, by appleiiguy

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winimage + usb Floppy drive for systems that can't boot from usb drvices

Reply 8 of 9, by Malik

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CD-Rs are cheap nowadays and easier to get.

It's ironic that you don't have a single floppy disk, especially when you are dealing with old hardware. Unless of course, you're just beginning to experiment with old hardware. Or if you have been having a really bad luck of not having a working floppy disk in possession. Floppy disks will be the easiest route for older motherboards. If you are going to deal with old hardware, I suggest you invest in floppy disks.

(Currently in ebay, I can see a local seller selling a box of 10's for about USD 6+ - but only local shipping.)

No harm in using a CD though. Other than it will be a big waste of space for a CD-R. CD+RW is better, but need a newer DVD / RW drive to read it.

5476332566_7480a12517_t.jpgSB Dos Drivers

Reply 9 of 9, by Imperious

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I know one of the Dos boot options in Hiren's cd usually lets You flash the bios, but if not You may need to
download a dos boot iso that doesn't use any memory managers as they sometimes will interfere with the
flash program.
Other than that just put the files in c:\bios then flash from there, I never had issues flashing from the hdd.

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

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