Dumb curiosity question re new ASUS motherboard installation.

[John Austin]

On Sat, 2007-08-11 at 01:18 +0930, Tim wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 23:19 -0400, William Case wrote:
> > But, the manual that came with the motherboard has setup disks etc.
> > The manual warns to do the setups and BIOS upgrades from a Windows
> > only operating system.  My question is; what do people do who only
> > have a Linux OS?  Are the setup CD's only useful to Window's users?
> > Or, is that warning only for liability protection? 
> 
> I've yet to see motherboard setup discs have anything other than Windows
> files on them.  If you're lucky, you can boot from a CD or floppy to
> update a BIOS, and don't have to have Windows installed.
> 
> And if you're really lucky, there's a BIOS option that you can use to
> update from any media.  Just like you can press DEL to enter the BIOS
> while starting up the PC, some have other keys to manage updating the
> BIOS in the same way.  You press a button and provide a BIOS file in
> some place that it expects.
> 
> For what it's worth, the discs that come with motherboards are often
> quite old by the time you get them.  You're probably best looking at the
> manufacturer's website for the latest files.
> 
> BIOS updates update the BIOS on the motherboard, and they're useful to
> you, no matter what OS you use.  But drivers for the on-board hardware
> (IDE, sound, etc.), are for the Windows OS, they update files within
> Windows, they don't do anything to the hardware.  So you can ignore
> them.
> 
> -- 
I had a similar problem of updating the BIOS of a Shuttle SD39P2
without floppy/windows physical machine. 
My solution was to use a memory stick and a vmware virtual machine
running windows2k. Details available if of any interest.

John