Hi! I think for BIOS flashing, a good way would be to start
with a minimal boot floppy image, you can find that online
for FreeDOS. Or use one with more apps on it and remove
some of them to make space. Then, you mount or open the
image with a free tool (depends on the OS, in Linux you
can use mtools as user or actually mount the image if you
are admin, as well as using any of various other methods)
to add the BIOS flash tool and BIOS file to it.
Next, you use the boot floppy image to make a CD or DVD
bootable in emulation mode. Most BIOS variants support
booting from 1.2, 1.44 and 2.88 MB floppy images and a
variety of CD/DVD writing tools let you specify an image
if you select that you want to make a bootable CD/DVD.
The advantage is that you will not need any CD/DVD drivers
which could interfere with the BIOS flash process, or any
other drivers apart from those that the flash too might be
needing. And of course keyboard drivers, if you like. For
many cases, you can use the small MKEYB to cover popular
layouts without needing additional data files.
The disadvantage is that the booted DOS "floppy" will be
read-only and that it will not have access to the rest of
the CD unless you also put the CD drivers on the "floppy".
You could probably also work with MEMDISK and a Linux
style boot menu instead of the pure BIOS floppy image
boot method. This will allow compressed floppy images
and writing, but of course any changes will be lost as
soon as you reboot the PC, because the floppy image is
never updated by MEMDISK. Changes only exist in RAM.
Also, MEMDISK again is a bit like a driver, so it can
interfere with your flash tool.
Of course, the best way would be to have a BIOS which
supports loading a BIOS file from any connected drive's
root directory, including USB sticks, without having to
boot anything from those, but a BIOS which is too old to
boot from USB will also be too old to have that feature.
Regards, Eric
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