After several months of begrudgingly putting up with my ASUS A7V
motherboard corrupting roughly 1 byte per 100 million read during
moderate to heavy PCI bus activity, I flashed VIA's 1009 BIOS this
evening.
I have not been able to reproduce any corruption since then (it was
ridiculously easy before the new BIOS), and my machine seems otherwise
as stable as I would hope. This marks the first time since 2.4.6 that
I've been able to run a Linus kernel without cowering.
I also discovered, of necessity, a halfway manageable process for
creating a DOS boot floppy using Windows ME, which Microsoft would
apparently prefer was not possible. I'll reproduce the steps here,
since otherwise flashing a new BIOS is likely to be nightmarish for
people stuck dual booting into WinME.
Most of these steps occur under Linux, and I'll assume that your Windows
Me "C:" drive is mounted as /dos/c.
- Format a floppy:
fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
- Create a FAT filesystem:
mkdosfs /dev/fd0
- Mount the floppy:
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
- Copy across a few files:
cp /dos/c/command.com /mnt
cp /dos/c/io.sys /mnt
cp /dos/c/msdos.sys /mnt
- Edit /mnt/msdos.sys, and change values as follows:
[Paths]
WinDir=a:\
WinBootDir=a:\
HostWinBootDrv=a
[Options]
BootMulti=0
BootGUI=0
AutoScan=0
- Copy across your BIOS flash utility (probably aflash.exe) and BIOS
image. Unmount the floppy (important; don't just reboot):
umount /mnt/floppy
- When you reboot to the floppy, it will desperately try to boot into
Windows. When it prompts you for the path to some Windows VXD, just
type "a:\command.com", and lo, you've got a DOS prompt.
Cheers,
<b
On Saturday, 27. October 2001 12:48, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> After several months of begrudgingly putting up with my ASUS A7V
> motherboard corrupting roughly 1 byte per 100 million read during
> moderate to heavy PCI bus activity, I flashed VIA's 1009 BIOS this
> evening.
>
> I have not been able to reproduce any corruption since then (it was
> ridiculously easy before the new BIOS), and my machine seems otherwise
> as stable as I would hope. This marks the first time since 2.4.6 that
> I've been able to run a Linus kernel without cowering.
Good news. Congrats.
> I also discovered, of necessity, a halfway manageable process for
> creating a DOS boot floppy using Windows ME, which Microsoft would
> apparently prefer was not possible. I'll reproduce the steps here,
> since otherwise flashing a new BIOS is likely to be nightmarish for
> people stuck dual booting into WinME.
>
> Most of these steps occur under Linux, and I'll assume that your Windows
> Me "C:" drive is mounted as /dos/c.
>
> - Format a floppy:
> fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
>
> - Create a FAT filesystem:
> mkdosfs /dev/fd0
>
> - Mount the floppy:
> mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
>
> - Copy across a few files:
> cp /dos/c/command.com /mnt
> cp /dos/c/io.sys /mnt
> cp /dos/c/msdos.sys /mnt
>
> - Edit /mnt/msdos.sys, and change values as follows:
> [Paths]
> WinDir=a:\
> WinBootDir=a:\
> HostWinBootDrv=a
>
> [Options]
> BootMulti=0
> BootGUI=0
> AutoScan=0
>
> - Copy across your BIOS flash utility (probably aflash.exe) and BIOS
> image. Unmount the floppy (important; don't just reboot):
> umount /mnt/floppy
>
> - When you reboot to the floppy, it will desperately try to boot into
> Windows. When it prompts you for the path to some Windows VXD, just
> type "a:\command.com", and lo, you've got a DOS prompt.
Since your floppy doesn't contain a valid bootsector, it won't start
from floppy here. At least my mkdosfs created boot sector says:
This is not a bootable disk. Please insert a bootable floppy and
press any key to try again ...
The simplest solution is choosing win(9*|me) from boot manager then, press
F8 immediately, select boot to command prompt. (Hope this works in me, too)
Issue
c:\> sys a:
and
c:\> edit msdos.sys
then, as above. If booting from floppy still fails, check BIOS boot order.
Note: if you don't trust your winloose inst., check the created bootsector:
1) Label at offset 3 should read MSWIN4.1 or the like
2) some readable error messages at around 0x180
3) IO SYSMSDOS SYS at ~0x1d8
BTW[FAR OT]: Somebody remember IHC here?
> Cheers,
>
> <b
Have-a-nice-stay-where-ever-you-are-ly yours,
FrisPete
On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 03:48:56AM -0700, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> After several months of begrudgingly putting up with my ASUS A7V
> motherboard corrupting roughly 1 byte per 100 million read during
> moderate to heavy PCI bus activity, I flashed VIA's 1009 BIOS this
> evening.
Please note that there have been broken versions of the 1009 BIOS
around. I know one person, and I read from serveral ones, who flashed
1009 to their A7V and were unable to start the computer afterwards.
(Hangs before/during POST).
Apparently ASUS has replaced the broken version with a working one
without updating the version number. But that's just a guess based on
recent success stories about 1009.
> I also discovered, of necessity, a halfway manageable process for
> creating a DOS boot floppy using Windows ME, which Microsoft would
> apparently prefer was not possible. I'll reproduce the steps here,
> since otherwise flashing a new BIOS is likely to be nightmarish for
> people stuck dual booting into WinME.
As I don't use Windows at all, FreeDOS has proven very useful for
flashing the bios. (http://www.freedos.org)
But, of course, no guarantees.
Jan
On 27 Oct 2001, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> I also discovered, of necessity, a halfway manageable process for
> creating a DOS boot floppy using Windows ME, which Microsoft would
> apparently prefer was not possible. I'll reproduce the steps here,
> since otherwise flashing a new BIOS is likely to be nightmarish for
> people stuck dual booting into WinME.
Slightly off topic, but you can also use the rescue disk (made using
add/remove programs in the control panel) to get a DOS prompt, and
use that to flash your new BIOS.
The Control or F8 trick to go to a DOS prompt does not work with ME.
Using FreeDOS is an even nicer approach, of course.
/Tobias
On Sat, 2001-10-27 at 06:17, Jan Niehusmann wrote:
> Please note that there have been broken versions of the 1009 BIOS
> around. I know one person, and I read from serveral ones, who flashed
> 1009 to their A7V and were unable to start the computer afterwards.
> (Hangs before/during POST).
Ouch. As it happens, my system now beeps repeatedly on POST, but
hitting the reset button convinces it to behave.
> As I don't use Windows at all, FreeDOS has proven very useful for
> flashing the bios. (http://www.freedos.org)
I should have thought of that, had it not been 3am.
<b
On 27 Oct 2001 03:48:56 -0700
"Bryan O'Sullivan" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I also discovered, of necessity, a halfway manageable process for
> creating a DOS boot floppy using Windows ME, which Microsoft would
> apparently prefer was not possible. I'll reproduce the steps here,
> since otherwise flashing a new BIOS is likely to be nightmarish for
> people stuck dual booting into WinME.
I notice that Dell use FreeDOS on their utility disks that do this sort of
thing. Dell++. Perhaps you might have more luck using that over
WinBlowsME.
http://www.freedos.org/
Sam.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Vilain" <[email protected]>
To: "Bryan O'Sullivan" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: VIA KT133 data corruption update
<snip>
>
> I notice that Dell use FreeDOS on their utility disks that do this sort of
> thing. Dell++. Perhaps you might have more luck using that over
> WinBlowsME.
>
> http://www.freedos.org/
>
Even better: http://www.bootdisk.org
"Martin Eriksson" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I notice that Dell use FreeDOS on their utility disks that do this
> > sort of thing. Dell++. Perhaps you might have more luck using that
> > over WinBlowsME.
> > http://www.freedos.org/
> Even better: http://www.bootdisk.org
http://www.whydidntithinkofthat.com
Don't know about you, but I can't get to bootdisk.org's nameservers. The
site isn't indexed by Google, either.
I tried bootdisk.com, but they have a distinctly w4r3z feel to them. That
tends to turn me off. Strictly speaking, you're not supposed to
distribute those images to people without a license...
Sam.
Bryan,
I have an A7V-133 motherboard, and the VIA IDE just started to work finally,
after upgrading my BIOS to 1007, the latest one, which came out on the same
day as your 1009. I never experienced "data corruption" as you described,
just irq timeouts which crashed fatally. It seems like everything is normal
now, in other words, I could install Mandrake 8.1 with no problems whereas
it failed dozens of times before. There was one other I did different this
time, and that was that I created the partitions in Partition Magic 7.0 for
Windows instead of using DiskDrake. I can't see this would have any bearing
on things, so I can only attribute the recent successful install to ASUS's
new BIOS.
David Grant
On Saturday October 27, Bryan O'Sullivan said:
>
>After several months of begrudgingly putting up with my ASUS A7V
>motherboard corrupting roughly 1 byte per 100 million read during
>moderate to heavy PCI bus activity, I flashed VIA's 1009 BIOS this
>evening.
>
>I have not been able to reproduce any corruption since then (it was
>ridiculously easy before the new BIOS), and my machine seems otherwise
>as stable as I would hope. This marks the first time since 2.4.6 that
>I've been able to run a Linus kernel without cowering.
>