On Sun, 05 Mar 2000, Stefan Bellon wrote:
[snip]
> BTW: I know more about Linux in general than I know about x86 hardware.
> Is it possible to flash another BIOS into my flash BIOS? Or does just
> the one supplied work?
Maybe, maybe not. There might be an updated BIOS availible from the company
you purchased the notebook from. As for a BIOS from some were else, it depends
on the board. BIOS tends to be a very board specific thing. Given that many so
called "manufacters" are nothing more than resellers of one companies notebook
(with the resellers own label on top) if you know the true maker of your
notebook you can try the makers website or the website of a different reseller
with the same basic notebook.
For instance, I have a Quantex I-1410, this is actually a TS30I3 made by
Compal. Dell and Midwest micro (amoung others) sell this same notebook under
their own brand name (Dell makes a slight change in hardware). The Dell BIOS
will probably not work in my Quantex, but the Midwest micro will. BTW I forgot,
and can't find a current linux-laptop archive, what notebook did you have?
>
> Well, in fact I did a similar thing immediately after I've recognised
> that LILO in MBR doesn't work, i.e. even before my first posting:
>
> 1) run Linux, run LILO in /dev/hda
> 2) dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1
> 3) marked /dev/hda1 bootable with cfdisk
> 4) rebooted with Win98 startup disk, then "fdisk /mbr"
> 5) rebooted: "Please insert boot-disk and press any key"
>
OK, now I'm really confused. If you have a DOS MBR and the Windows partition
marked active then it boots, but if the Linux patition is active then it gives
the error? Are you sure only 1 partition was marked active at a time?
[snip]
> Well, I assume your notebook boots even from the MBR without problems.
>
I just tried this on my notebook as well as my old 486 desktop. Both work fine
with a DOS MBR and LILO on a Linux partition marked active. If 2 partitions are
marked active, I get an "Invalid partion table" error at bootup, presumably
from the DOS MBR. Below is my setup:
[root@Vagabond /root]# fdisk -l /dev/hda
Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 839 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 277 2094088+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 * 278 281 30240 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 282 829 4142880 5 Extended
/dev/hda4 830 839 75600 a0 IBM Thinkpad hibernation
/dev/hda5 282 559 2101648+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 560 577 136048+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 578 618 309928+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 619 829 1595128+ 83 Linux
hda is DOS MBR
hda1 hexdump shows as MSWIN4.1
hda2 hexdump shows as LILO
Adrian
