IBM ThinkPad 600 BIOS update without working battery

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Guys, as many of u i have been searching for hours in order to find a way to flash a Thinkpad BIOS with out a charged battery just to realize this:

-JUST READ THE INSTRUCCIONS.

In the Lenovo site the following text is given (at least for the model T23):
"Note: For unattended update, specify the file name with options "-s -a -s". (Example: C:\Temp\1auj20us.EXE -s -a -s) The BIOS is updated without any user interaction."

If u do that u will be able to update the BIOS and the Embedded Controller Program Version without a charged battery and without making any kind of customized bootable disks or something extra.
This worked for me and maybe will be usefull for someone else. BYE.

I successfully used a two floppy method to update BIOS on my IBM 600E with a dead battery..

1. F1/ Power on to set flash BIOS enable.

2. Restarted with a generic MS-DOS Boot Disk I made in WinXP (you can do this by checking the ms-dos boot disk box instead of the quickformat box in the right-click format pop-up). Takes 10 seconds.

3. Booted with the generic MS-DOS bootdisk floppy. Got an A:\ prompt.

4. Swapped in the Lenovo spsdin36.exe bootdisk, typed in "flash2.exe /u" minus quotations of course.

5. Sweated for two minutes..... looks OK, then I

6. Restarted with F1/Power on. Opened Config menu, initialized.. done.

BTW... my battery has ZERO charge.

BTW BTW- If you're in Sacramento area and want to borrow my external floppy drive, PM me.

[edwin]

Thanks for all the info guys!

Right I have just got my 600x back up so I could load ubuntu onto it, however I needed a bios update. No battery no floppy. I have got all the ms dos files and the bios files on a cd now, I now just need to find a way to run it!

I hold F1 on startup, I go to config then network but network wont open! How am I going to enable flashing the bios if I can't open the network setting? Anyone's help would be great!

Jake