A VERY CUSTOM DOS MEMSTICK

yes, this is about BIOS/Firmware updates

REQUIREMENTS

have a look at current firmware version on the target machine

    dmidecode -t system
    dmidecode -t bios

grab the latest FreeDOS floppy release

wget https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc4/FD13-Floppy.zip
unzip FD13-Floppy.zip

prepare MS-SYS

    wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ms-sys/ms-sys-2.6.0.tar.gz
    tar xzf ms-sys-2.6.0.tar.gz
    cd ms-sys-2.6.0/
echo $MAKEFLAGS
    make
    make install
cd ../

IMAGE PREP

inspect the current situation

    ms-sys FD13FLOP.img

grab the FreeDOS tree from there

mkdir lala/
mount FD13FLOP.img lala/

MEMSTICK PREP

create a FAT16 MBR partition on the memstick, e.g. +100M wide AND SET THE BOOTABLE FLAG

fdisk -l
    fdisk -c=dos /dev/MEMSTICK

    o
    n
    p

ENTER (1)
    ENTER (62!)
    +100M

    t
    6
    a
    w

format it as FAT16

    partprobe /dev/sda
    ls -lF /dev/sda*
    mkfs.fat -F16 /dev/MEMSTICK-PARTITION-1

bring the FreeDOS tree in there and eventually some needed ROM and flashing executables

    mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/
    cp -R lala/* /mnt/
    cp -R ~/DRIVERS/.../* /mnt/
    ls -alhF /mnt/
    umount /mnt/

write the boot-code with MS-SYS

    ms-sys -h
    ms-sys --write --force /dev/MEMSTICK
    ms-sys --fat16free /dev/MEMSTICK-PARTITION-1

READY TO GO

now that all the hassling is over, release the image file

    umount lala/
    rmdir lala/

RESOURCES

ms-sys http://ms-sys.sourceforge.net/

#12 Create an MS-DOS bootable stick https://sourceforge.net/p/ms-sys/support-requests/12/

Bootable DOS USB stick https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Bootable_DOS_USB_stick

FreeDOS environment https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/BIOS_Update#FreeDOS_environment

FlashBIOS https://wiki.debian.org/FlashBIOS

FREEDOS Ripcord BootDisk http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/

Flashing BIOS from Linux https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux

Images that are too large for a floppy https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux#Images_that_are_too_large_for_a_floppy

How to fix the error ‘missing command interpreter’ https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000012.htm

Making a PXE-bootable 10MB or larger DOS image https://superuser.com/questions/438120/making-a-pxe-bootable-10mb-or-larger-dos-image