Arch Linux

Luis Q. R.

Member

Registered: 2003-02-20

Posts: 106

Firmware update

I've just bought a new dvd recorder, a LG GSA-4081b. I updated the firmware in Windows, but, how would you do it in Linux?

TheRaginAsian

Member

From: Brooklyn MI

Registered: 2004-04-05

Posts: 70

Website

Re: Firmware update

I believe Firmware is specific to the Drive, aka, if you load FIRMware it will be written onto the Drive's memory so updating it though Linux would not be nessesary. Could be wrong though. If it still works then I'd imagine its all kewl.

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John Gallias
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shen

Member

Registered: 2003-09-05

Posts: 272

Website

Re: Firmware update

Yes firmware is specific to the hardware and not the OS but the tool used to update the firmware is generally OS specific and is an executable application that takes the new firmware data file and ipdates the hardware. So unless they make a linux util to update the firmware then you are restricted to the OS they make the update util for.

Win

Member

Registered: 2004-03-04

Posts: 155

Re: Firmware update

Hi Luis Q. R.

Updating firmware can be something of a chore under Linux.  As I am sure you have discovered, many hardware manufacturers provide only DOS or Windows utilities to perform these updates.  This can be really quite annoying if you don't have a floppy disk drive at all  (as in one of my machines).

The simplest thing to do if you have a DOS utility is:

1. Find on the Internet a DOS (I usually pick version 6.22) bootable diskette image and prepare a bootable DOS floppy diskette.
2. Copy the DOS utilities to the diskette (perhaps into a sub-directory of your own designation).
3. Boot from the floppy drive and run the utility from the floppy.

Most utilities come in both Windows and DOS forms, so this is normally easy to do.

If there's only a Windows graphical utility, you've got much more to do, but this is not insurmountable:

1. Find on the Internet a bootable Windows CD ISO  image with a minimal graphical environment.
2. Get a Windows CD ISO image editor.
3. Add the Windows utility to the ISO image.
4. Burn a CD using the ISO image.
5. Boot from the Windows CD and run the utility from the CD.

You'll have to do some digging to get all this together, but you can find this all reasonably easily.

Regards,

Win