Re: ANNOUNCE: /dev/bios - flash rom bios driver
Dave Cinege (dcinege@psychosis.com)
Thu, 12 Feb 1998 03:45:07 -0500
>> >> Ok, it is much more dangerous for the hardware to do a cat /dev/zero >/
>> >> dev/bios than cat /dev/zero >/dev/sda, but in both cases the system
>> >> is a) unusable and needs reinstall/repair and b) can be quite easily
>> >> repaired.
>> >
>> >Can it really be repaired easily? I thought that the procedure was to go with
>> >your tail between your legs to your vendor and ask nicely for a new set of BIOS
>> >chips.
>> >
>>
>> Some SuperMicro boards have a "rescue" procedure where if the flash
>> upgrade fails you can load a bios image onto a floppy, and power cycle
>> the system while holding down a certain key combination. I don't know
>> for sure but I think that part of the BIOS is never replaced when
>> using their utility to upgrade the flash. This part has enough
>> functionality to read the image from the floppy and write it into
>> the rest of the flash. This is just a guess though.
On higher end boxes (Intel XXpress, etc) it use two flash parts, or a combo flash part. The
back-up section has enough code to do the above, and usually requires a jumper to be
thrown.
The newer AMI BIOS will do this if you hold down Ctrl+Home on power-up. If the flash utils
never try to overwrite this bootstrap part of the BIOS, it is a decent but not fool proof
safeguard.
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