Update BIOS on Eee PC

Today I will tell you how to update the BIOS on the netbook ASUS Eee PC 900. It is likely that the steps described here are suitable for flashing other netbooks of this family.

The easiest way to do it under Linux is to format it in FAT32 / FAT16, write the file there under the name 900.ROM, reboot, press Alt + F2. And here surprises begin ...

Why is not everything so simple

Flashing the BIOS on a netbook turned out to be a nontrivial matter. There were only 2 and 4 GB flash drives available; an attempt to format them and flash a netbook with their help ended in failure. Various options have been tried: different flash drives, FAT16 and FAT32, formatting the partition and the flash drive itself. The only option that shows signs of life was the option of formatting the flash drive in FAT16 itself, but it wasn’t all that good either. The firmware found the file, started reading, but then hung. In other cases, it simply hung on the message “Reading file 900.ROM” even without trying to read it from a flash drive.
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What to do?

Then I remembered that ASUS recommends using small flash drives for sewing, and, apparently, not just. Therefore, I decided to deceive the system by "creating" a 10Mb flash drive. There, the firmware will be guaranteed to be located somewhere at the beginning of the disk and the bootloader will be able to read it. So it happened.

We act!

1. Downloading new firmware from here .
2. Unpack, rename the file to 900.ROM (for other Asus EEE Pc xyz models, the file name will be xyz.ROM)
3. Create the image of our future flash drive
   dd if = / dev / zero of = mytestfile.out bs = 1 count = 0 seek = 10M
4. Format it in FAT16
   mkdosfs -F 16 mytestfile.out
5. We mount
   mount -o loop mytestfile.out / mnt /
6. Copy there file 900.ROM
7. Unmount
   umount / mnt
8. We write the image on the USB flash drive
   dd if = mytestfile.out of = / dev / sdc

After that, everything is standard: turn off the netbook, insert the USB flash drive, turn on the netbook, press Alt + F2, after a few minutes enjoy the updated BIOS. After the update, the firmware will ask you to turn off the power of the netbook. The next time you turn on you will most likely be offered to reset the BIOS settings, there is nothing to worry about. Also, some devices may turn off in the BIOS (I have disabled Wi-Fi and something else), turn them on if they are needed.

PS

The image was poured onto a 2GB flash drive, but it seems to me that this method will work with any flash drives.

Have a nice update!