Friday, August 13, 2004

Got Floppy...?
Bill's Rant of the Day Dept: Forget what a moustache might look like. The trend lately has been to delete the floppy drive from systems. It's old tech, barely used, and, besides, it will save the seller about $12.... Let me give you a tip on why you should definitely have a floppy drive in your computer: BIOS repair work.

Yeah, sure, I know, most if not all of the motherboards currently available have BIOS updating software supplied so it's no longer that arcane task it used to be. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work correctly. Like with my excruciatingly wonderful ASUS A8V motherboard. The ASUS BIOS updater was gladly willing to upload the latest (v 1.006) BIOS for it, assured me that everything was correct, both before and after it was done, and, wa-la (voila, for those of you who visit the continent), any time the system is rebooted the BIOS jumper needs to be moved first or else nothing happens.

Of course, the automated BIOS updater won't re-install the older BIOS because it's older. For that I need a copy of ASUS' AFUDOS software, booted from, you guessed it, the floppy. I await the arrival of two of those little beasties. Oh yeah, I need one for the Giga-byte motherboard in the "other" Athlon system. Good thing I have four Pentium-based computers too.
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