Re: Making a Bootable DOS USB Drive to Upgrade BIOS

> I downloaded FreeDOS-1.1 (fd11src.iso) and copied it onto the USB flash
> drive with 'dd if=fdsrc11.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1M' (as root). this produced
> a couple of files and a couple of directories on the USB drive, but it's
> read-only so I cannot copy the BIOS firmware .exe files to it.

I see 3 options here:

1- copy the .exe file to the USB stick: I'm pretty sure you can append 
your .exe file to the stick

2- mount the freedos iso, copy the .exe file on it, make the iso again 
(mkisofs) and finally dd to the usb stick

3- burn the .exe file on a cdrom and use it via freedos (x:\>)

> An hour or more of searching the Web found several sites that have
> explicit instructions for making a bootable DOS USB drive from ubuntu (or
> ubuntu-based) systems, or from Windows. I'm trying to find a way to get a
> bootable DOS on the stick from my Slackware systems.

If you really want to make DOS bootable on your laptop, you have to 
install freedos on a primary partition (<- to be verified). You should 
configure lilo to boot on it.

All the best,
Luca.