Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:38:48 +0100 (BST) From: Anton Shterenlikht <mexas@bristol.ac.uk> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: laptop with no BIOS? or BIOS reflash pain Message-ID: <201210191038.q9JAcmq7073341@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk>
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I've HP compaq 6715s laptop. It's all right with 10-current. I've got wireless and at one point I even managed to get flash working. My problem is with BIOS. Apparently it's wrong and John Baldwin provided me with a pci.c patch to get it to boot. There is an updated BIOS version, but so far I failed to get it installed. HP only provide MS and freedos executables. I tried BartPE - doesn't work. I tried plugging in a MS disk - doesn't work. The only think I haven't tried is getting a spare disk, installing freedos on it and then running the freedos executable from USB - what a fucking pain... For proper hardware (servers) HP provide images which are executed from management console, but not for laptops. I guess the idea that one might use their laptops for anything other than MS is so wild, that it never crossed their maid. Anyway, I think I've heard there are some laptops with no BIOS, is this true? Or perhaps there are brands where BIOS reflash is not such a great pain? I remember on Compaq Armada the BIOS was stored on disk and Compaq provided a floppy image to boot from and reflash BIOS. That was easy. Anything like this exist these days? Are there any EFI laptops? Any model people would recommend? Thanks Anton
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