Updating BIOS on Eee PC
Today I will tell you how to update the BIOS on the ASUS Eee PC 900 netbook. It is likely that the steps described here are suitable for flashing other netbooks of this family.
The easiest way for Linux to do this is: format the USB flash drive in FAT32 / FAT16, write a file there under the name 900.ROM, reboot, press Alt + F2. And then the surprises begin ...
Flashing the BIOS on a netbook turned out to be non-trivial. Only flash drives of 2 and 4 GB were available, an attempt to format them and flash a netbook with their help failed. All sorts of options were tried: different flash drives, FAT16 and FAT32, formatting the partition and the flash drive itself. The only option that showed signs of life was the option of formatting the flash drive itself in FAT16, but even there it was not so good. The firmware program found the file, began to read, but then hung. In other cases, she simply hung on the message “Reading file 900.ROM” even without trying to read it from a flash drive.
Then I remembered that ASUS recommends using small flash drives for sewing, and, apparently, for a reason. Therefore, I decided to trick the system by "creating" a 10MB flash drive. There, the firmware will be guaranteed to be located somewhere at the beginning of the disk and the loader will be able to read it. And so it happened.
After that, everything is standard: turn off the netbook, insert the USB flash drive, turn on the netbook, press Alt + F2, after a few minutes we are happy with the updated BIOS. After updating, the firmware will ask you to turn off the power of the netbook. The next time you turn it on, you will most likely be asked to reset the BIOS, there is nothing wrong with that. Also, in the BIOS, some devices may be disabled (I had Wi-Fi and something else disabled), turn them on if necessary.
The image was uploaded to a 2GB flash drive, but it seems to me that this method will work with any flash drives.
Have a nice update!
The easiest way for Linux to do this is: format the USB flash drive in FAT32 / FAT16, write a file there under the name 900.ROM, reboot, press Alt + F2. And then the surprises begin ...
Why is it not so simple
Flashing the BIOS on a netbook turned out to be non-trivial. Only flash drives of 2 and 4 GB were available, an attempt to format them and flash a netbook with their help failed. All sorts of options were tried: different flash drives, FAT16 and FAT32, formatting the partition and the flash drive itself. The only option that showed signs of life was the option of formatting the flash drive itself in FAT16, but even there it was not so good. The firmware program found the file, began to read, but then hung. In other cases, she simply hung on the message “Reading file 900.ROM” even without trying to read it from a flash drive.
What to do?
Then I remembered that ASUS recommends using small flash drives for sewing, and, apparently, for a reason. Therefore, I decided to trick the system by "creating" a 10MB flash drive. There, the firmware will be guaranteed to be located somewhere at the beginning of the disk and the loader will be able to read it. And so it happened.
We act!
- Download the new firmware from here .
- Unpack, rename the file to 900.ROM (for other Asus EEE Pc xyz models, the file name will be xyz.ROM)
- We create an image of our future flash drive
dd if = / dev / zero of = mytestfile.out bs = 1 count = 0 seek = 10M - Format it in FAT16
mkdosfs -F 16 mytestfile.out - Mount
mount -o loop mytestfile.out / mnt / - Copy the 900.ROM file there
- Unmount
umount / mnt - We write the image to the USB flash drive
dd if = mytestfile.out of = / dev / sdc
After that, everything is standard: turn off the netbook, insert the USB flash drive, turn on the netbook, press Alt + F2, after a few minutes we are happy with the updated BIOS. After updating, the firmware will ask you to turn off the power of the netbook. The next time you turn it on, you will most likely be asked to reset the BIOS, there is nothing wrong with that. Also, in the BIOS, some devices may be disabled (I had Wi-Fi and something else disabled), turn them on if necessary.
PS
The image was uploaded to a 2GB flash drive, but it seems to me that this method will work with any flash drives.
Have a nice update!