updating bios via floppy- how long should it take?

[pepperg]

it's been 25min now and "starting caldera dr-dos..." is still on the screen. i have the 680i mobo and i put the new p26 bios on a floppy which i placed in the A drive. 'FF' is on the mobo led display, which indicates "boot", but why is it still going? should it really take this long?
it did also say "verifying dmi pool data...update success" but i have no idea what this means, and this was displayed above the "starting caldera dr-dos, leading me to think that i had to wait for the caldera thing to load.

so, am i good, or is something f'd?

 

[Mondoman]

Something's not right. First, the DMI pool stuff is just a normal BIOS bootup message. The starting DRDOS is the DOS on the floppy starting up, and should have been followed by something within 30 seconds or so. Unless the BIOS update is setup on your floppy to autoexecute on bootup (not a good idea), you should eventually have a DOS prompt waiting for you on the screen. At that point you enter the proper command (or batch file name) and run the BIOS update. The update program itself likely will have a nice character-based graphic showing the update progress.
Seems like it got stuck during the DOS startup.

 

[pepperg]

i rebooted and found that the same older bios (p23) loaded up, so it didn't work


the contents of the floppy are:

autoexec.bat
command.com
evgap26.bin
ibmbio.com
ibmdos.com
nvfl_tri.exe

this is a new computer, and it does not have an OS loaded onto it, and i don't know if i need to assign hard drives (2 sata hdrives- a 150gig raptor for primary and 320gig seagate for storage) or whatever in the bios. i did clearly hear the A drive spool up, and that resulted in the "starting caldera dr-dos..." but nothing happended after that

 

[Mondoman]

Like I said, DOS started, but seemingly didn't finish its startup. Perhaps it's corrupted or not compatible with your MB.

 

[billdcat4]

Yea, updating your BIOS should take ~1min.

I did it a couple times trying to revive my DEAD DELL.

Good luck

 

[pepperg]

this sucks

i have created my bios update floppy correctly according to the NF68_p26.exe that i ran, i have created my startup disc succesfully, so what might be problem? is it possibly the A drive (which i know works) not reading the disc for some reason?

i've tried two diff't floppies now, same result. #$%!

 

[blue68f100]

You need to use a pc that has dos, XP does not have a true dos and will not work. There is a site called BIOSmods.com , they have self extracting boot image software you can use to make a bootable floppy.

A bad floppy or disk drive can raise havic to.

I have a programmer for those hard ones.

 

[pepperg]

3rd time's the charm i guess...a 3rd floppy worked this time

 

[nvalhalla]

You're lucky it crashed loading DOS and not while updating the BIOS. I killed a motherboard with a bad floppy that way years ago. I only flash firmware from within windows now, too scary to use a floppy. That and I don't have a floppy drive anymore...

 

[blue68f100]

You were lucky, I have all kind of problem updating bios over the years, win and dos. I purchased a programmer for the ones that crash, and have spare chips just encase the chip is bad. Allows be to salvage computers that failed during bios updating.

I had a power hickup doing one one time. Now I only do it with UPS backup.

 

[Zorg]

You should always perform a full format on the disk before writing the update to it. Also if you write with one floppy drive sometimes you can't read with a different one, don't ask me why.