HOWTO Build your own bootable CD-ROM for BIOS updates

From Consultancy.EdVoncken.NET

Most vendors assume that you have Windows and a floppy drive available for BIOS updates. Using FreeDOS, Linux and a CD-ROM burner, we can emulate a floppy for the firmware update. This can be used to boot the PC, and update the firmware.

Download required software

Download the BIOS Flash program (MS-DOS executable) plus the actual firmware from the vendor's website (in my case, the files were named FLASH895.EXE and p35ds3r.f9).
Download the bootable floppy image fdboot.img) from one of the mirrors of the FreeDOS website.

Modify the Bootable Floppy image

mount -o loop -t vfat fdboot.img /mnt/floppy
If needed, modify autoexec.bat and/or remove superfluous files to make space for the flash program plus image
Copy the flash.exe and the bios.bin file to /mnt/floppy (in my case, FLASH895.EXE and p35ds3r.f9)
Umount /mnt/floppy

Create an ISO image for burning to CD-ROM

mkisofs -o p35ds3r-f9.iso -b fdboot.img fdboot.img
Burn the ISO image file to a blank CD-R or CD-RW

Flash the BIOS

Boot your machine from this CD-ROM
Run the flash update program - done!

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