[sf-lug] BIOS Update

[Tom Haddon]

On Sat, 2007-07-07 at 08:23 -0700, Jason Turner wrote:
> On Jul 7, 2007, at 6:15 AM, Tom Haddon wrote:
> 
> > Hi Folks,
> >
> > Got a request here. Is there anyone coming to the computer lab  
> > tomorrow
> > that has a computer running Windows with a floppy disk drive and some
> > some floppy disks? I need to update the BIOS on the donated  
> > servers, and
> > from what I can see on the Dell site, the only option is a Windows
> > executable that will create the floppies for you. Since I have neither
> > floppy drives nor Windows, I'm out of luck on both...
> >
> > In the current BIOS version, the servers seem to only allow booting  
> > from
> > hard disk or floppy, which makes the installation a little more
> > cumbersome - especially seeing as I have no floppy drive to write  
> > disks
> > to...
> >
> > Thanks, Tom
> > -- 
> 
> 
> Tom,
> 
> A couple questions back at you... have you tried this bit of insiders  
> advice from ExpertsExchange,
> 
> "Booting from CD (from the PE2300 user's Guide):
> 
>     *  In the system setup program, the Secondary SCSI category must  
> be set to On and the Boot Sequence category must be set to Diskette  
> First .
>      * In the SCSI Select utility, the BIOS Support For Bootable CD- 
> ROM category must be set to Enabled.
> "
> 

It was actually my mistake. It says in the boot options only diskette or
hard drive, but it does indeed boot from CD, so installation works fine.

> I looked through the update notes of several BIOS updates and missed  
> the explicit addition of boot menu changes.  Yes, I can just grab the  
> latest and greatest.... http://tinyurl.com/29ytzf
> 

I think I found a more up to date one. Can you try this?

http://tinyurl.com/2qz2h9

Thanks, Tom

> This begs the question, are there any more "critical" firmware  
> updates we should snag for these servers?
> 
> I've got access to a floppy drive on a Win2000 machine but I can't  
> bring it[the machine] with me.  Hopefully the above config  
> instructions work with the current BIOS.  If not, I can bring  
> floppies of any suggested updates.
> 
> 
> --
> jt
> 
> 
-- 


----------------------------------
Tom Haddon
mailto:tom at greenleaftech.net
m +1.415.871.4180
www.greenleaftech.net