Hi,

I'm currently downloading 50b12 ISO because I want to update the firmware of two hard disks I have. I have found the firmware file and a DOS program that is supposed to somehow install the new firmware to the disks.

What I have is a 1GB USB stick and an SATA DVD drive (but no CDs or DVDs I could write on). I haven't had a floppy disk drive in my computer since at least a decade.

What I need is a way to boot some kind of DOS (which is hopefully compatible with the program that installs the firmware update) in order to run the program that updates the firmware. That means I need to get into some sort of DOS shell from which the program and the firmware file are available.

Can I do that with the UBCD? I guess I need to modify the ISO by copying the program I need to run and the firmware file somewhere into the ISO before writing the ISO to the USB stick. If I need to create a bootable DOS disk image for that which I then copy into the ISO, well, I don't know how to do that. I could try to modify one of the images that are contained in the ISO, but will it still be bootable?

I'm mounting these image files with mount [imagefile] [mountpoint] -t loop, so they are easy to modify. But touching them could make them unbootable?

I'll try it out and see how far I get with this, but I might need some help to figure it out ...

Get a freedos image from: http://bootcd.narod.ru/images.htm
Choose fd001440.zip if you want a 1.44MB floppy image or choose another file which fits your needs.
Extract the floppy image from the zip archive, rename it to a more approriate name (e.g.: firmware.img) and mount the image.
Now you can put the firmware files (executables) on the image.
Unmount the image and put it in /ubcd/custom/ (/ubcd/custom/firmware.img).

Add an entry in one of the syslinux config files.
e.g.: /ubcd/menus/syslinux/custom.cfg and add this to the file:

When you boot this image from the menu, you have to run the firmware programs from the command line. Remember that the files that you create after you have booted the image, aren't written back to the image (only stored in RAM), so if you want to save the old firmware, save those files directly on the USB stick.

_________________
Download Ultimate Boot CD v5.0: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

Hi.

I've been trying to do the exact same thing today. (I'm pretty sure I had done something similar long ago to flash a MB, but this time, I'm updating my CD drive's firmware and it doesn't go that smooth.)

I booted on UBCD from my CD drive. Then went to FreeDOS and browse. Then took the CD out and replaced it with a CD containing the executable and the firmware.bin. Then executed the flash utilitary. Apparently it didn't work : the loading stops at some point and nothing happens until I manually reboot the PC. (You can see the loading going on with a ####### bar growing two of three times, but then it gets stuck.)

I though it might be because I'm trying to replace the firmware of the drive I'm reading the binary from. Could that be an issue ?

So I figured out I could try with a USB stick, on which I would add the needed files.

But it appears that from FreeDOS, I can't browse the USB drive. I'm like stuck in FreeDOS's own virtual filesystem.

Is there a way I could access the UBCD installation filesystem ?

I tried to modify a .iso as per above, but a disk .iso is mounted read-only and a floopy .iso is too small. So I'm stuck this way too.

Thanks for any clue.

Check out:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/customize.html

under "Adding FreeDOS-based applications".

You need to put your app under "custom", regen fdubcd.iso.gz and remake the UBCD iso.

Hi. Thanks for the link.

I guess this stands for a "no, there's no way to access the UBCD filesystem".

I'll try that.

I hope the issue was the fact that I was flashing the same drive I used for the flashing operation.