BIOS Upgrade

BIOS Upgrade

Updating from within Windows

When upgrading from a Windows installation, a BIOS upgrade is quite simple if you follow the IBM instructions, as described on the respective BIOS upgrade page on the IBM site.

Models	Page
R50/p, R51 (1829, 1830, 1831, 1836), T40/p, T41/p, T42/p	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program
R51 (2883, 2887, 2888, 2889, 2894, 2895)	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program
R50e	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program
X31	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program

Updating from Floppy Disk

For other operating systems there is an option to create a bootable floppy disk. This is described on the IBM site as well. Note that you still need some Windows, OS/2 or DOS-System to create the floppy disk. For Linux you can use DOSEMU for this.

Models	Page
R50/p, R51 (1829, 1830, 1831, 1836), T40/p, T41/p, T42/p	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program
R51 (2883, 2887, 2888, 2889, 2894, 2895)	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program
R50e	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program
X31	BIOS, Embedded Controller Program

Updating from CD/DVD Drive

The whole thing gets more complicated if you neither have Windows nor a floppy drive installed. This is what this page is intended to describe.

One solution is to extract the floppy disk image with Windows, OS/2 or DOS, and use this image as a boot image for a CD/DVD. Thus it should be possible to upgrade the BIOS with the built-in CD/DVD drive.

Be aware that IBM officially does not support this! The official statement to my support request was:

I'm afraid we only support the options listed on our web page and no you
can't burn a CD/DVD, however you can try to use an external USB FDD
(floppy) drive. The experts recommend a IBM USB FDD, however they have also
tested it with a Sony USB FDD drive.

In order to make sure the drive is recognised you can boot up the FDD with
a bootable dos diskette for w98

But it seems to be possible as Mathias Dalheimer describes this here.

Another indication that it should work is that IBM uses PHLASH16.EXE (at least on T4x/p systems) to flash the BIOS into the chip. The same tool is used by other vendors to flash the BIOS from bootable CD-ROMs.

Some interesting but very technical information about the used flash tool can be found here.

To get an overview which models have been tested with this version, here is a list:

Does work:

Model	Tested by
R31	Mathias Dalheimer

Does not work:

Model

Tested by

Please note that testing this is at your own risk!!!

Updating with Network Boot Image

Anyone tried this? Please add your experiences here.

Tried some different method? Please add as well.