flashing BIOS on a Tiny?

[cosine]

hi, new person and all that

my friend, who has a Tiny PC (Pentium 4, socket 478), decided he needed a bigger Hard Disk in his system, so he went out and bought a Seagate 200gb. I then got a frantic phone call from him saying he couldn't get it to work, so I went round to have a look, and it turns out the BIOS only recognises it as a 136gb.
I did some poking around, and identified the mainboard as a Microstar MS-6534 Ver 1, then hopped onto their website and grabbed a BIOS update that supports larger drives.

So my question is this, has anyone flashed the BIOS on a Tiny PC? Was it successful, since I know that HP and the like have custom BIOSes and standard BIOS upgrades either dont work, or kill the BIOS completely (found that out the hard way).

Thanks!

 

[Becky]

Hello and welcome to the forums!

 

[floppybootstomp]

Have never flashed the Bios on a Tiny PC but it should be the same as most others.

Did they have instructions on how to flash Bios at the Microstar site?

Normally you make a bootable floppy disk, load the new bios and sometimes some dedicated flashing software from the manuafacturer, boot PC, change boot priority to floppy, insert floppy then save Bios, boot and follow instructions.

Below is a utility for making a bootable floppy disk, drd.flash, it's a small file (you'll have to unzip it, the file you want is in the folder, an .exe file).

Just put a blank floppy disk in your drive, click on this program and it will create a bootable floppy disk.

Then add your new Bios and any other associated files and flash.

DO follow the instructions at the Microstar site.

Edit: The file's too large at 139Kb Gimme a sec and I'll host it.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Here we go: DRDflash (right click, save target as)

 

[cosine]

Sexy Bex:

Thanks!

floppybootstomp:

Yeah, the BIOS looks very standard, unlike the some Compaq/Dell ones I've seen, where alot of the options are disabled.

I'll give it a shot anyway, and thanks for the bootdisk maker