USB Floppy drives

[GT98]

Anyone use these? I was thinking about getting one for doing BIOS updates, since thats what Floppy drives are all about good for these days. I was wondering if you could boot off them (assuming you can if the BIOS supports it), since thats what I'll need it to do.

[Gurm]

If the BIOS supports it, yes.

- Gurm

[K6-III]

Just use a CD to flash your bios....much more reliable than floppy.

Use a Win98 CD to boot up DOS with CDROM support.

Have your CD ready with bios flasher and bin files to flash.

Flash as you would off floppy, but off CD...

[Wombat]

That's an awful idea. Most flashers let you save the old ROM image on to the floppy. How would you do that with a CD? Not to mention that you're relying on more drivers if you use the CD.

[Dogbert]

Most current hardware bioses can be flashed with windows utilities.
What bios are you trying to flash ?

*another option can be usb flash memory (disk-on-key). Some are bootable.

[K6-III]

Originally posted by Wombat
That's an awful idea. Most flashers let you save the old ROM image on to the floppy. How would you do that with a CD? Not to mention that you're relying on more drivers if you use the CD.

You can backup all the bios releases your heart desires on a CD...plenty of room.

Yes, you do rely on more drivers, but floppy corruption is far more likely a problem than basic CDROM drivers...

[GT98]

Originally posted by Dogbert
Most current hardware bioses can be flashed with windows utilities.
What bios are you trying to flash ?

*another option can be usb flash memory (disk-on-key). Some are bootable.

I was flashing my Shuttle SS51G this past weekend. I had to pull out the floppy out of my dead AMD box to do it. I didnt see anything on Shuttle's website about a Windows based BIOS flasher and after using Asus EzBios thingy and goofing the flash up on my A7S333, I'm very leary of doing any other way then with a bootable floppy and AMI's BIOS Flasher in DOS. Never screwed one up doing that way

[The PIT]

I prefer the old dos boot disk. Nothing running in the background that may stuff your bios.

[KeiFront]

I agree with The Pit.

Altough floppy's are unreliable they are easy to use.

[Gurm]

Or you could make a BOOTABLE CD, with the Win98 boot image on it... *grin*

- Gurm

[az]

Or just flash from the harddisk, if you have any form of DOS on there. If not, and if it's formatted in FAT, boot from CD and flash from the HD. Or find an old HD, put DOS/Win9x and the BIOS flasher n files on it, boot from it, and be happy

AZ

[Technoid]

before I NTFS'ed my HDD's I used to flash from HDD, but now as they are'nt readable from DOS I'm all for floppy!

Risk of floppy coruption is very slim if the floppy never leaves the drive...

[Wombat]

Also, floppies are another example of getting what you pay for. Those "$3 for 100" deals give you bad disks. Also, the 3M Imation disks are pretty crappy, probably 10% IFR. Good floppies and good drives will last a long time.

[Dogbert]

Like I said, if you don't trust the windows utils (I flashed my Asus A7V333 and it worked quite well, as well as a samsung DVD RPC1 Eprom), use the USB flash disk-on-key solution. It's bootable and has 8-512MB (depends on the model).

[rugger]

Heh,

I use flash from hard drive after clean boot into dos (often from said hard drive or a CD)

The reason? I can't seem to find any damned floppy disks any more. The ones I do have, I never use, so they end up wondering off and dieing without telling me anymore. Even when I find them again, they are ussually so hosed that they probably should not be put back into ANY floppy drive.

I used to have hundreds of disks (legacy from pre-hard drive days), but now I have none