Thinkpad BIOS Upgrade
If I’m ever to upgrade the RAM in my laptop I need to update the BIOS because the current one (2.01) only supports 512MB SODIMMS. As it so happens I need to update the embedded controller program as well. Since the Linux upgrade disks are still stuck in the past and I have a Windows box I figured I’d just use it to create the disks. In my mind I pictured this simple process of creating the disks, booting up my laptop, running the programs and I’m done. It wasn’t quite that simple.
- First problem was the update programs don’t like being running from a directory with spaces in it. If you do run them in such a directory you get this useful error message:
Usage : OS2 /P <full path > /C <original CommandLine>
Since I was too lazy to type the full path I copied them to C:\ so the path would be short and ran it again. This time it just worked. Having no desire to learn how IBM constructed the program to only run in certain directories I left it be. - Next problem is that I only have a box of old floppy disks. I had forgotten the joys of media that can rot. The first disk was rejected by the program even though I managed to format it with mtools in Linux yesterday. It liked the next disk and copied over the files.
- The Thinkpad is fussier about the disks it accepts and said it wasn’t a system disk. I could mount it in Linux and see the files but Windows also couldn’t read the disk. I began to wonder if this upgrade is such a good idea. I went through the rest of the floppies and the second last one is accepted and the Thinkpad boots it!
Thankfully the rest of the process went smoothly, nothing worse than a dead PC because of an interruption to a BIOS upgrade. When upgrading the BIOS there were two options, 1. Upgrade system programs and 2. Change model number only. I updated the system programs but left the model number alone.
Booting up again confirms the embedded controller is now at 1.06 and the BIOS is at 2.08! I resetted the BIOS to the defaults and restored my settings. Linux boots up fine and as far as I can tell, nothing’s changed. Now I just to acquire some RAM.
