BIOS Updates forum

Is it possible to use grub on fat12? I had assumed it was not. If you have some pointers/tips for investigating this approach that would be great. If it is possible, the floppy bootsector will still need to be patched to have a different entry point.
(The floppy disk must be formatted in fat12, with ...

Actually, the Acer 1300 and Acer 1310 Crisis bios sections look equivalent to the one in my Benq, but the Acer 2010/2020/Extensa images additionally have reference to CREXT.CHB [as well as the BIOS.ROM stuff]. That rings a bell, some other bios recovery procedures use that name? However the Crisis ...

My zip file downloads fine for me and I can confirm the files are not corrupt. There are two files, insydeco.exe and readme.txt (these are the original ones as previously downloaded from the biosgfx site). Please try again.

http://www.beermex.com/insydeco.0.1.zip

Alternatively if this still ...

I've uploaded a copy of the windows insydeco decompressor (command-line) tool to my local webspace, for those that have been having trouble downloading

wimsbios isn't letting me post the link (as I don't have 10 posts yet). But it's at www dot beermex dot com forwardslash insydeco.0.1.zip

Updated list of laptops with identical Insyde CRISIS bios sections

So, not much of an update. BenQ tech support redirecting me around the houses on both phone and email support, failing to acknowledge any crisis recovery mode whatsoever. Their repair centre seems to be unable to understand the ...

Doze2: That's correct, although the links on that site are dead ends - I got mine from the wayback machine. I will upload a mirror to some webspace too if it helps others out too. This link via archive.org points to a dated mirror
http://web.archive.org/web/20051018070723/www.kaos.ru/biosgfx/index ...

The bios upgrade is just the usual stuff - dos-based flasher and .rom file. upgrade instructions are 'boot to dos and run update.bat'.

e.g.:
http://benq.co.uk/support/downloads/drivercounter.cfm?dpid=562&id=2070&size=303%20KB&type=B&filename=5000U_BIOS_109.zip&type=B&whereto=%2Fsupport%2Fdownloads ...

I contacted BenQ who said that they do not stock any such recovery floppy, and they also denied all knowledge of a crisis recovery mode. They also suggested I phone their premium support line. So - they didn't really say I would have to pay for that file, but I would imagine I would spend a lot of ...

I got a message back from Insyde , when I queried them to see if any of the recovery files are available. They say that they don't produce BIOSes, they just provide source code to manufactures who can integrate as they see fit. Suggesting that Insyde crisis recovery is perhaps not a one-size-fits ...

I've got a BenQ Joybook 5000U circa 2004-ish, which I'm trying to recover from a bad flash. I've made some progress (see my thread on the technical page) but at the point where I think I just need proprietary files from the manufacturer, and I'm assuming they won't give them out for free (nor are ...

Patching a floppy disk boot sector so that the entry point is at 7c80 actually works - I tried it with a Caldera DR-DOS floppy image. My Benq laptop (joybook 5000u, insyde MobilePro bios version 4, intel ICH4 mobo) gets as far as the "Loading Caldera DR-DOS" message (indicating the floppy boot ...

Actually, what the Insyde bios bootblock code really seems to be doing is:

1. Look for a file named BIOS.ROM. Load some of it. (Possibly also extract the VGABIOS from it and apply it, but not completely sure)

2. If we got this far, show the flashing message "Loading Flash Utility\r\nPlease Wait ...

Using some insyde/systemsoft decompression code I managed to split out the BIOS for my Benq laptop (dead from a failed bios flash), and it includes a CRISIS.ROM

Dissasembling that a bit, it looks for a file named BIOS.ROM on a connected floppy drive, reads in something like 64KB of the file, and ...