Messages in this thread |  | | Subject | VIA KT133 data corruption update | From | "Bryan O'Sullivan" <> | Date | 27 Oct 2001 03:48:56 -0700 |
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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,
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