OK, I did it.
My wife has a small windows laptop, a 2 lb vaio.
It does not have a serial port, so I used the KeySpan 19QW USB-serial
adapter. I initially tried to load the drivers (Fedora had the drivers
built-in) from the KeySpan website. They only have drivers for their
current shipping product - the 19HS. I downloaded this, but of course,
it did not work.
I managed to locate the original software disk that came with the
KeySpan device, hooked up an external CDROM drive to the Vaio and got
the correct software drivers installed. Disconnecting the CDROM drive
(uses both of the USB ports on the Vaio - for data and power), and
plugging in the KeySpan adapter and running the KeySpan Serial Assistant
to find out the port number (COM11). I also configured the speed at 9600
and noted that hardware flow control was the default.
I copied the b5501_133c.bin file to a flash drive and then to the Vaio
desktop. The files shown below were copied from the Hyperterminal screen
and copied back to my Fedora email machine using the same flash drive.
Finding Hyperterminal and configuring it to not dial out through a
modem, but just patiently listen to COM11. Power cycling the soekris
5501 box and following the Hyperterm way of sending xmodem files gave
me:
Success - although I wish that minicom had worked. Perhaps I will have a
serial line sniffer when I have to upgrade the BIOS again.
The download at 9600 baud took about 3 minutes. A faster speed would
result in a faster download, but risks data corruption if either end
cannot keep up with the data flow. Hardware flow control does help.
(Note the change in BIOS version, and also my flash disk boots up from
cold boot - the reason for the BIOS upgrade).
=========================
comBIOS ver. 1.33 20070103 Copyright (C) 2000-2007 Soekris
Engineering.
net5501
0512 Mbyte Memory CPU Geode LX 500 Mhz
Pri Mas CF 2GB LBA Xlt 983-64-63 1982 Mbyte
Slot Vend Dev ClassRev Cmd Stat CL LT HT Base1 Base2 Int
-------------------------------------------------------------------
0:01:2 1022 2082 10100000 0006 0220 08 00 00 A0000000 00000000 10
0:06:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E101 A0004000 11
0:07:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E201 A0004100 05
0:08:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E301 A0004200 09
0:09:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E401 A0004300 12
0:20:0 1022 2090 06010003 0009 02A0 08 40 80 00006001 00006101
0:20:2 1022 209A 01018001 0005 02A0 08 00 00 00000000 00000000
0:21:0 1022 2094 0C031002 0006 0230 08 00 80 A0005000 00000000 15
0:21:1 1022 2095 0C032002 0006 0230 08 00 00 A0006000 00000000 15
5 Seconds to automatic boot. Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
comBIOS Monitor. Press ? for help.
> download -
Start sending file using XMODEM/CRC protocol.
File downloaded succesfully, size 784 Blocks.
> flashupdate
Updating BIOS Flash ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,..,,,,.... Done.
> reboot
comBIOS ver. 1.33c 20080626 Copyright (C) 2000-2008 Soekris
Engineering.
net5501
0512 Mbyte Memory CPU Geode LX 500 Mhz
Pri Mas CF 2GB LBA Xlt 983-64-63 1982 Mbyte
Slot Vend Dev ClassRev Cmd Stat CL LT HT Base1 Base2 Int
-------------------------------------------------------------------
0:01:2 1022 2082 10100000 0006 0220 08 00 00 A0000000 00000000 10
0:06:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E101 A0004000 11
0:07:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E201 A0004100 05
0:08:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E301 A0004200 09
0:09:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E401 A0004300 12
0:20:0 1022 2090 06010003 0009 02A0 08 40 80 00006001 00006101
0:20:2 1022 209A 01018001 0005 02A0 08 00 00 00000000 00000000
0:21:0 1022 2094 0C031002 0006 0230 08 00 80 A0005000 00000000 15
0:21:1 1022 2095 0C032002 0006 0230 08 00 00 A0006000 00000000 15
4 Seconds to automatic boot. Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
comBIOS Monitor. Press ? for help.
>
POST: 012345689bcefghips1234ajklnopqr,,,tvwxy
Booting 'BobG-Linux'
root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0x6
kernel /boot/vmlinuz
[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x2a00, size=0x2768b0]
initrd /boot/initramf.igz
[Linux-initrd @ 0x1fe8a000, 0x165dff bytes]
boot
POST: 012345689bcefghips1234ajklnopqr,,,tvwxy
GNU GRUB version 0.97-os.7 (639K lower / 523264K upper memory)
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