Making DOS bootable USB drive?

Ok, I had an old 1GB USB flash drive sitting around that I used for booting into DOS. I wanted to flash my Asus Eee 1215B-PU17 BIOS. As far as I can tell they offer only a DOS flash utility. It wouldn't boot off my USB flash drive.

So I followed this technique here (which I believe is same way I did it before):
MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive - Create - Windows 7 Forums

I even tried a couple USB flash drives and a couple different USB ports. And yes I set it to boot off the USB flash drive first in BIOS. Of all things to get my BIOS flashed I had to make a 100MB FAT32 partition to put the ROM and flash utility on, and then boot off a USB floppy with an old Win98 DOS diskette I made. That worked. How stupid.

I am able to boot off the USB flash drive on my HP DV6z laptop no problem though.

I'd still like to know if I'm doing something wrong or if there is a reason it wouldn't boot for future use. Ideas?

 

I used the same method to create my bootable flash drive for atiflash. Honestly, i do not see what could be the problem except that it might not like large size USB drives. I used a 2GB drive myself, we have an old win98 desktop in a lab at university (the tech likes to reuse old stuff, don't ask me what i think about it or i'll rant for a while ) and it doesn't like flash drives over 2GB so that is actually the only issue i could see, your bios not liking large capacity drives (16-bit updater maybe?). No Easy Flash utility on the Eee?

 

1GB though. Really? That's small by today's standards, even by Win98 standards not that big. 16-bit would mean 64 MB max. I don't even think 64MB flash drives exist. I think the smallest I ever had was 128MB and that was like ten years ago, lol.

By easy flash utility do you mean a windows based flash? Under utilities they only have this DOS utility. However Windows 7 installed off the USB drive just fine.

 

Easy Flash is a utility available on Asus laptops and motherboards that allow you to flash the bios from within the bios. Go into the bios, advanced tab and choose start easy flash. Browse to your bios file on a FAT formatted usb drive and hit enter. simple and reliable, don't know if it is available on Eees though.

32MB and 64MB flash drives did exist, i remember seeing a 64MB one back in 2003 or 2004. I didn't see it for sale, a friend had one so it might have been much older.

EDIT: Here's one: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicati...No=382573&sku=S450-6064&kb=y&sourceid&afsrc=1.

 

No such thing that I saw, and just checked after you stated that. This is the "Eee" brand so maybe it's different? I dunno.

 

Well, i think i remember seeing somewhere that easy flash wasn't an option on the Eees.

Check this link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/174395-bios-update-guide-asus-notebooks.html. More particularly the AFLASH option. Make sure it works with Eees as well. Check my above post for an old school 64MB thumb drive .

 

LOL @ 32MB flash drive. Yikes! Then again floppy drives existed for a long time at 1.44MB. Heck I just used one to flash my BIOS, lol. Guess legacy hardware dies hard doesn't it!?

Wonder if I could partition a flash drive at 32MB and see if that worked? Maybe I'll give it a go just for fun.

 

I still have a 8Mb flash drive and a 16Mb SD card

 

I'll have to dig through my box of stuff and I might actually have 64MB, maybe smaller but don't ever recall having one that small. Or if anything threw it out because it was worthless more or less.

 

You could try UNetbootin, and freedos. It's supposed to be able to work.

 

Thanks, but the problem is the program has to run in DOS. FreeDOS requires installation on the resident PC, although I'd much prefer USB, and UNetbootin is Linux, which won't let me run the program.

 

UNetbootin is for windows also. At the top left, "Download for Windows", "Download for Linux", "Download for Mac OS X".

 

I know, but what I'm saying it it lets you boot into a linux environment, not DOS.

EDIT: NM, It has FreeDOS. Didn't realize it. Thanks! +1 (even though you have rep disabled )

Tried it and doesn't work either.

 

Sorry to hear that.