[ltp] Boot floppy image on CD (was Re: Hibernate on T41P)

Daniel Pittman linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Thu, 17 Jun 2004 11:00:25 +1000


On 17 Jun 2004, Justin Mason wrote:

[...]

> Eventually I installed Windows 98 (!!) into the first partition, so I
> could run the BIOS upgrade program -- running it from a DOS bootdisk (it's
> a win32 app) or from WinXP failed in various other interesting ways.
> running from win98 worked fine ;)

Alas. At least for my A31p there is a "Linux" version of the same, which
unpacks a floppy disk image.
>
> (a bootable ISO image of the BIOS upgrade would probably be best. if I
> recall correctly, it's possible to burn a floppy image as an ISO? if so,
> that should probably be documented somewhere; it isn't currently.  

It is possible, and reasonably trivial. The invocation is in mkisofs,
like:

] mkisofs -b ibm-bios.1440 ibm-bios.1440 ... 

The '-b <file>' specifies that it is a boot image, and you do need to
put in on the CD image as well. :)

> Also, IBM's bios upgrade "diskette" is distributed as a win32 EXE.

Well, a win32 executable that writes a raw disk image to a floppy, yes.
I tend to unpack it on whatever win32 box I can get my hands on, then
just use the floppy image.

Maybe someone would be kind enough to open a collection where people can
send in the raw disk images for use with Linux?

     Daniel
-- 
People demand freedom of speech to make up 
for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
        -- Søren Kierkegaard