All current “IBM-Compatible” PC’s use a Basic Input/Output System also known as a BIOS. It’s a program that tells the PC how to start up when you switch it on, raises any critical faults with the system and then passes control to an operating system on a boot medium.

As time goes on, like any program, bugs are found, improvements are made, and the manufacturer of your PC’s motherboard will provide updates to the BIOS, usually supplied as a small downloadable file. Normally it is usually intended that you reboot your PC onto a DOS-compatible boot floppy disk and run the BIOS update program to install the new BIOS firmware. These days this process has been a bit simplified what with Windows users generally being able to do this from within Windows itself and even more recently, from the BIOS itself or even though starting the system on a FAT16-formatted USB stick.

This is all well and good, but what if you have an older system that cannot be flashed from Windows? What if you don’t even have Windows? What about a system that still relies on booting from a floppy disk to flash the BIOS? I don’t know about you, but I highly doubt any of the remaining floppy disks in my garage work anymore, and besides that, there’s a good chance that the floppy drive itself on older PC’s probably doesn’t work anymore.

So what can you do?

Well, we can utilise a floppy disk image that ultimately boots from your hard-drive, but acts and operates exactly like a DOS floppy disk would.

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