[CentOS] OT: BIOS upgrades and booting without a floppy drive

Tue Aug 23 01:12:48 UTC 2005
Johnny Hughes <mailing-lists at hughesjr.com>

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 18:01 -0700, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> I've got a machine running CentOS 3.5 with an Intel D865GBF
> motherboard and I've been having an occasional "event" where
> disk-intensive activity (such as running "yum check-update" or
> starting up OpenOffice) causes the load average to spike and X11 to
> become unresponsive (as in, the pointer won't even track the mouse)
> for a few seconds.  The machine always recovers and returns to normal,
> but it's getting a bit annoying.
> 
> I saw one thread in which the suggested solution for a vaguely similar
> problem was to switch from the SMP kernel with hyperthreading to the
> UP kernel, but that hasn't made much difference.  Then I saw Dave G's
> recent thread in which a more severe yum-related lockup was solved
> with a BIOS upgrade.
> 
> I see there's a D865GBF BIOS upgrade on the Intel site, dating from
> May.  Problem is it comes only as either a Windows installer, or a
> bootable floppy -- and not only does this machine not have a floppy
> drive, but the case configuration is such that the DVD-ROM drive
> blocks access to the floppy connector on the motherboard, so I'm
> looking at minor surgery just to stick one in temporarily.
> 
> Is there any clever way around this?  Some way to make a bootable CD
> from the floppy image, for example?  Or must I grit my teeth and bring
> out the screwdrivers?

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
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