F2 motherboard BIOS update „WN DOS 21/01“
Contents of DOWNLOAD.ZIP *UPDATE????IMG.EXE Win-Image executable for Windows: Creates a bootable DOS based update disk on 1,44MB/3,5" floppy. *UPDATE????DD.BIN Image file for Linux (dd): Creates a bootable DOS based update disk on 1,44MB/3,5" floppy.
\DOS\*.* Contains all update files for USB stick or other media
README.PDF This information ???? ...... Actual BIOS release number * …………………………. Motherboard type Contents of this README file CONTENTS OF DOWNLOAD.ZIP...... 1 CONTENTS OF THIS README FILE ...... 1 GENERAL REMARKS...... 1 Known problems or restrictions ...... 1 LIMITS AND FEATURES OF F2 DOS BIOS ...... 2 Default setup values...... 3 CRISIS DISK FOR BIOS RECOVERY...... 4 DOS BASED UPDATE PROCEDURE RELEASE 4.6...... 4 Running DOS BIOS update from external USB boot media...... 4 Running DOS BIOS update from CD-ROM...... 5 How to use DOS based flash tool "UPBIOS.EXE" ...... 5 General remarks This is a new BEETLE motherboard BIOS release for customer specific projects . BEETLE systems from production line usually will NOT contain this release. The BIOS is suited to run on WN motherboards "F2 STD” and “F2 ULV”.
New features / improvements / highlights • Improved power management causes lower current on 5V stdby. Known problems or restrictions • It is not possible to start a pre-installed Windows XP if project BIOS is flashed. • No proper function of any other Windows installation guaranteed as well! • We did not test any Linux installation running this project BIOS! • There are lots of features not available, see table “limits and features…” • See also chapter FAQ at end of document…
README.PDF 1 / 9 F2 motherboard BIOS update „WN DOS 21/01“ Limits and features of F2 DOS BIOS
Function Support Comment PXE boot at BIOS runtime YES Note! No BIOS flash update over PXE possible! Legacy USB YES Legacy USB support over BIOS. Feature = boot (only) from USB mass storage! Some USB mouse and keyboard are available running MS-DOS, mass storage may be! We tested a handful of USB sticks – emulated hard disks; not floppy emulation! CDROM boot (XBDA) YES This code includes USB-CDROM boot. UDMA support YES For all devices (HDD, etc.) that support UDMA SATA controller YES No driver required. Serial ATA controller is compatible to legacy parallel ATA PS/2 mouse YES Available by y cable for keyboard/mouse LAN on motherboard YES Intel Pro100 VE desktop adapter driver needed! SM712 PLINK controller YES SM712 contains a VIDEO BIOS PROM that starts up while BIOS boot. Touch rerouting COM1/2 YES Supported only with WN sub module SM712 based. COM34 COM3 YES Fixed to “WN legacy” values I/O 3E8; shared IRQ10 bridge COM4 YES Fixed to “WN legacy” values: I/O 270; shared IRQ10 PCI riser PCIs upper YES Tested with WN PCI COM board in upper slot only! card PCIs lower YES WN PLINK controller based on SM712 in lower slot only! PCI SUB module YES Tested with SM712 2nd TFT WN PLINK controller only! PCI express NO Use riser card with 2 x PCI standard only! DMI NO DMI data remains if DOS BIOS is flashed; after return to STD BIOS DMI is available! ACPI NO Not required for MS-DOS. Onboard Sound NO Onboard sound is DISABLED by BIOS! Driver installation will fail!!! Legacy FDD NO No hardware support by motherboard Parallel port NO WN F2 motherboard does not provide parallel port; thus BIOS can not, too! Onboard graphics of Intel chipset does not support stretching (640x480 up scaling to 800x600 or 1024x768)!!! SM712 based controller do. We did some basic tests with MS-DOS 6.22 only; no guarantee for DR-DOS and others…
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Default setup values After corrupted checksum the BIOS will set its default to the following values: Main Primary Master: AUTO Primary Slave AUTO Secondary Master: AUTO Secondary Slave: AUTO Advanced Reset Configuration Data: NO Speaker Volume HIGH Large Disk Access Mode DOS Legacy USB Support ENABLED USB Time Out Value (HIGH) Internal LAN Controller ENABLED Onboard LAN Boot Prom ENABLED Quick Boot Mode DISABLED Video output to COM3 DISABLED Fan control Automatic Chipset Configuration SMART Device Monitoring DISABLED Boot-Video device PCI SLOT USB 2.0 Support ENABLED I/O Device Configuration Serial port A ENABLED Base I/O address 3F8 Interrupt IRQ4 Serial port B ENABLED Base I/O address 2F8 Interrupt IRQ3 Parallel port DISABLED Touch Screen Routing COM2: DMI Event Logging Clear all DMI event logs NO Event Logging ENABLED Security Set Supervisor Password NO PASSWORD SET Power Power State STAY OFF Wake On LAN DISABLED Wake On Modem Ring DISABLED Wake On Time DISABLED Hardware Monitor Boot Boot Order Follow Setup Order +Removable Devices +Hard Drive +CD-ROM Drive Network Boot IBA FE slot
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Crisis disk for BIOS recovery There is no crises disk available for project releases! Use standard (STD) BIOS crisis disk to recover from crashed BIOS update. DOS based update procedure release 4.6 There are some features of the actual DOS based update procedure: If any of these advanced features is wanted, you need to adapt the update floppy disk! See chapter How to use DOS based flash tool "UPBIOS.EXE" for further information about all options.
DMI data will be preserved . Automatic start of BIOS update after boot up of floppy! You are not prompted to confirm flash update, but you may abort the automatic procedure, when asked. It provides output to external line displays for BEETLE with or without VGA adapter. Another feature of update procedure is the support of CMOS setup data save/restore . You can set setup options as wanted, than create an image file of BIOS setup data and after easily write the certain settings from image file to CMOS memory while BIOS flash update procedure!
Running DOS BIOS update from external USB boot media The F2 BIOS supports DOS boot from external USB floppy, CD-ROM,… Unfortunately, most (all?) distributors of memory sticks do not provide any information about the boot ability of their devices. You need to buy & test… This is not a BEETLE restriction – most PC BIOS do show similar problems!
How to create a bootable USB boot device for BEETLE? Most vendors provide a Windows based program to create bootable sticks. If not available, this may help you to do so:
1. Create a MS-DOS 6.22 (!) boot floppy and copy fdisk.exe and format.com to it 2. Install a BEETLE with D2 or E1 motherboard and internal (standard) floppy drive. To avoid confusion, it’s good practise to disconnect SATA/PATA hard disk drives! 3. Enable “USB legacy” mode in BIOS SETUP and boot DOS floppy from internal floppy drive … 4. Now, you can detect if your USB mass storage is supported or not: If the USB device emulates a hard disk, FDISK should present it If the USB device emulates a floppy disk, DOS should show a new drive letter 5. Use fdisk.exe and/or “format.com
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Running DOS BIOS update from CD-ROM Update disk releases since 4.0 and higher support bootable CD-ROM media for BIOS update. The recommended (and easiest) way to build an update CD is this: 1) Create bootable floppy disk from WN image and leave the floppy inside drive. 2) Start your favourite tool and build a bootable CD. When ask, choose “floppy disk emulation from floppy in drive”!
How to use DOS based flash tool "UPBIOS.EXE" This information is also placed in README_4.TXT on floppy!!
**************************************************************************** * * * How to use Flashtool "upbios.exe Version 4.x" * * * ****************************************************************************
Chapters: ======General Options Configuration Security Backflashing Plausability Examples
General: ======
"Upbios 4.x" is designed for easy support of Phoenix(R) "phlash16.exe" flashtool. Update procedure is running automatically, configurable via "upbios.cfg" configurationfile and via arguments from commandline. All messages are minimized and optimized for use of 2x20 lines display. No need of keyboard input, but abort of procedure is possible. Beep support is provided for abort option (one doublebeep), successful operation (two doublebeeps), error messages (three doublebeeps).
Options are selectable from commandline. It might be useful to create an "autoexec.bat" providing the complete commandline.
Configuration is done via "upbios.cfg" configurationfile.
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Options: ======
Calling syntax: upbios [com3] [cdump] [cload] [t] [q] [p] [m n] [over] [anyway]
Any options may be mixed, but if cdump is selected, no Bios update will be done.
Note: Options from commandline will override appropriate keyword prperties in "upbios.cfg".
upbios: Bios update using "upbios.cfg"
com3: if BA6x on COM3 is available, screen output will be redirected to COM3.
cdump: make a CMOS-copy of actual system into "cmosdump.img". No Bios update will be done.
cload: Before Bios update, CMOS of actual system will be loaded from "cmosdump.img"
t: (t)est: testmode for debugging problems only, no Bios update will be done.
q: (q)uickmode: waiting between 2-line-messages and beeps will be overrun
p: (p)roduction: do not use Phoenix(R) screening while flashing (always used with com3-option)
m n: (m)ode: force flashmode n overrides automatic mode recognition: if n=4, flashes BIOS area only if n=6, flashes BIOS + Bootblock
Note: CMOS checksum will be cleared (except n=1)
over: ignore message "->no update needed" and reflash Bios, but without clearing checksum of CMOS; so, Setup will NOT reset to default values.
anyway: ignore errormessages from upbios that would abort Bios update
any other option will break and display options available.
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Configuration: ======
Configuration is done via "upbios.cfg". Keywords must begin in coloumn 0 and spell exactly til ":". Arguments have to follow immediately. Number and order of lines do not matter. Keywords work as follows:
must-be-keys: ======
biosversion: ID of new biosversion to be flashed bootblock: ID of new bootblock to be flashed Note: Before flashing, upbios.exe will compare both IDs from old Bios and new Bios. If both IDs are identical, update will be aborted.
must-be-keys may be defined by Bios development only!
optional-keys: ======
cmosversion: CMOS checksum will not be cleared, if found biosversion of previous Bios is equal or higher to value of cmosversion. Superior condition is BIOS does not detect any checksum error after reboot. Keyword may be defined by Bios development only!
dmiversion: DMI data will be initialized, if found biosversion of previous Bios is lower to value of dmiversion.
testversion: set by Bios development only to message testversions to be flashed.
testflag: set by Bios development only to debug problems. Will be OR-ed with "t" option.
production: "1" inhibits Phoenix(R) Phlash-Interface. Will be OR-ed with "p" option.
ramdisk: Will install a ramdisk and run upbios.exe from installed ramdisk. (Drive c: to o:)
modeflag: overrides automatic mode recognition, cleares CMOS checksum: if 1, flashes DMI area only (exception: no CMOS checksum clear) if 4, flashes BIOS area only if 5, flashes BIOS + DMI if 6, flashes BIOS + Bootblock if 7, flashes BIOS + Bootblock + DMI
prebatch.bat file "prebatch.bat" is available, this batchfile will be executet before Phlash will be called. This is the way for additional actions, for example calling RSMBI.
Security: ======
After calling upbios.exe all needed files are checked to be available. Using option "cload", writing to CMOS area is possible only, if header of "cmosdump.img" corresponds to system platform and biosversion to be flashed. Otherwise upbios.exe breaks and reports error.
Hardware platforms (F2) are checked via bootblock check to avoid system breakdown after flashing with Bios that is not designed for that hardware.
Crossover flashing is possible only, if different Biosversions are built for the same platform; example:
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Plausibility: ======
Bootblock IDs of old and new Bios are checked. Bootblock will be flashed only if ID's are different.
DMI data area will be checked and reflashed only, if actual DMI data area is corrupted or not available (flashing from POS to STD Bios). In addition option "dmiversion" will determine when to initialize DMI data area during Bios upgrade.
Flashing from STD to POS Bios will generate DMI errormessage. Errormessage may be overridden with commandline option "anyway" or interactively by request.
CMOS Checksum will not be cleared, if - the "cload" option was used OR - the "cmosversion:"-parameter in "upbios.cfg" is equal or higher to biosversion ID found in actual system.
Upbios.exe will report success and will NOT reflash Bios, if biosversion and bootblockversion found in actual system correspond to the values of must-be-keys in "upbios.cfg".
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Examples: ======- commandline: ======
"upbios" : normal call using "upbios.cfg" for configuration, no options
"upbios com3" : as before, using display on COM3 if available
"upbios cdump" : creating CMOS-image from actual system, no Bios update
"upbios cload" : load CMOS-image (if available) into CMOS, followed by Bios update
"upbios cload q p" : load CMOS-image (if available) into CMOS, followed by Bios update; no beeps, no waiting during text scrolling, no Phoenix Phlash-Screen; fastest way of Bios update inclusive Setup configuration
"upbios anyway" : run upbios ignoring all possible errormessages
- configfile "upbios.cfg" ======
Note: In general the configuration area for any biosversion will be defined by Bios development!
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######################################################################### # # UPBIOS [com3] [cdump | cload] # ======# com3 : use display connected to COM3 if available # cdump: create CMOSDUMP.IMG from actual system # cload: update Bios and load CMOS with CMOSDUMP.IMG # ######################################################################### # #remove leading characters to activate keywords. # #needed======#biosversion:WN XXX aa/bb new BIOS ID #bootblock:X/Y new BB ID # #optional======#cmosversion:aa/bb no CMOS checksum clearing, if updating # from Biosversion aabb or higher #dmiversion:aa/bb no DMI data area clearing, if updating # from Biosversion aabb or higher #dmistruct:aa/bb first Biosversion with NEW DMI-structure #testversion: any string #testflag:0 if 1, messaging variables and preventing flashing #production:0 if 1, does not use Phoenix Phlash Interface #ramdisk:0 if 1, uses Ramdisk for Update #modeflag:0 overrides automatic mode recognition: # if 1, flashes DMI area only # if 4, flashes BIOS area only # if 5, flashes BIOS + DMI # if 6, flashes BIOS + Bootblock # if 7, flashes BIOS + Bootblock + DMI ##########################################################################
########################################################################## # Configuration area: ########################################################################## biosversion:WN STD 08/18 bootblock:2SA dmiversion:03/06 cmosversion:07/16 production:1
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