Can a AWARD bios be flashed if computer has no floppy?

Questions that don't belong in the other forums.
Post Reply
montreal
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2005 9:56 pm

Hello,

I just purchased 3 industrial computer boards that were modified slightly from the regular production line for an original commercial customer.

On board is an AWARD 4.51PG bios customized to have a setup password built into the firmware and not the CMOS. For his unique application, he had the PS/2 mouse and floppy disk controller switched off in the bios before locking it down with the password protection.

I would like to flash this bios with the generic bios rom code available from the manufacturer for users who bought the regular production line version.

In spite of being locked, the BIOS will detect my hard disk and boot up Windows 98 on it, where the Windows was built on another system before hand. The keyboard and serial mouse also function. I use a video controller card.

If I temporarily move this hard disk to another system, I can add software as needed.

I am asking if it is possible to create a hard disk, with a minimum DOS or Windows on it, that when booted by my industrial computer, would allow me to flash the BIOS?

I understand there is a requirement for low level memory mapping, which a bootable diskette achieves.


Could a hard drive be made to look like a cloned version of such a bootable standalone diskette?


P.S. I created a boot disk on a CD from PCDOS700-nrg.zip and unfortunately, this CD would not boot after I disconnected the hard disk from the ide cable. It seems that my current BIOS will only boot from a hard disk.

Thanks
ajzchips
El cheapo dude
Posts: 3048
Joined: Sat Mar 23, 2002 12:41 pm
Location: Madrid, Spain

Flashing from a HDD is quite normal, and frequently done...

Even simple MSDOS will do fine.
montreal
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2005 9:56 pm

ajzchips wrote:Flashing from a HDD is quite normal, and frequently done...

Even simple MSDOS will do fine.
Thanks for your suggestion.

How do I go about building a bootable MSDOS on a blank HDD so that I don't get a prompt from the BIOS after booting asking me to specify where COMMAND.COM is to be found?

Unfortunately my keyboard is not recognized in DOS mode, only under Windows. If I want to flash, then I imagine I will have to create an AUTOEXEC.BAT file which includes the line C:AWDFLASH.EXE xxxxxx.BIN.

Do I also have to press <F5> while booting the DOS hard disk so that it is a "clean boot"? I tried pressing <F8> once while booting Windows and unlike my other computers, this computer ignores this key. In fact, I believe my current BIOS ignores all keys except CNTL-ALT-DEL. Only when Windows installs a keyboard driver does the keyboard function.
peanut
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2005 10:04 pm

had similar problems recently trying to install windows on a lifebook with no floppy drive or CD drive.
Surely if you attach drive to other PC and install contents of a normal win98
floppy boot disk and the win98 install disk then transfer it back it should boot from that and setup from the HDD?

Then again why don't you just get replacement cmos chip from Jack at www.badflash.com ? :wink:
montreal
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2005 9:56 pm

peanut wrote:Surely if you attach your drive to another PC and install the contents of a normal win98 floppy boot disk and the win98 install disk, then transfer it back, it should boot from that and setup from the HDD?
Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes, I just successfully flashed my BIOS. Here's what I did:

1) I took a 428 mb hard disk and made it the only disk on my other computer.

2) I booted up the MAXBLAST4 for DOS utility diskette. This is similar to Western Digital tools for DOS, and the like.

3) I chose to initialize this disk as a boot device.

4) When asked, I selected windows 98 as the OS.

5) It created the partition and formatted.

6) It asked me to insert my Windows 98 startup diskette.

7) I shut down this system and re-installed my original C drive along with the newly formatted hard drive on the same computer which just initialized my new hard drive.

8) From a separate source (CDROM), I copied onto the D drive (the drive I just formatted) AWDFLASH.EXE and my new BIOS binary file.

9) I also created on the D drive a brand new AUTOEXEC.BAT file with the single command:

awdflash newbios /py oldbios /sy /cc /cp /cd

This batch approach was necessary because the old bios would not allow the keyboard to function in DOS mode, so an interactive approach was impossible.

I found if my rom file was named newbios.bin, AWDFLASH would not find the file. So I renamed the binary file in order to remove the extension .bin.

10) I moved this D drive back to my industrial computer (as a single C drive) and powered it up.

11) The AUTOEXEC.BAT soon ran and I saw the AWARD page telling me how things were progressing. After about 20 seconds, I was told to power down and reboot.

Voila, my new bios was installed. I found that without adding the /CC switch (to clear the CMOS), the old setup password was still blocking my entry into the BIOS setup even though the BIOS program had changed completely. It is a mystery to me why removing the CMOS battery failed to clear the CMOS. It would seem that my CMOS memory is actually a flash device (like the BIOS chip itself) which retains certain data even when the battery power goes away. Or the passwords are kept in the BIOS chip rather than in the CMOS chip to prevent people from bypassing the security by removing the battery.

I was then able to enter the BIOS setup for the first time ever and arrange things the way I wanted.

Results:

1) my floppy controller and floppy drive now get recognized
2) my keyboard now works in DOS mode.
3) I can detect the presence of a PS/2 mouse port
4) the BIOS now assigns an IRQ for my USB universal controller and this controller now configures correctly under Windows.


Thanks to all of you who posted and encouraged me to pursue this.
Post Reply