RCA RM4100:Howto Hotflash

=Howto Hotflash The Bios on the RM4100=

You can use this method to recover from a bad bios flash or for bios development. OK, here is the whole process I used:

By linux_junkie

First you will have to desolder your firmware hub. I used a heatgun, and a piece of aluminum foil. Cut out a small square in the foil just enough to fit over the chip. This is to protect the other components. Heat up the sides of the chip and then it will just fall off. Be carefull not to damage any of the solder pads they lift very easily. Then I took a PLCC 32 socket and cut out the center plastic piece and soldered it on.

Unless you have a eprom programmer the easiet way to flash your bios is using the hotflash method.

See this page: BIOS Flashing and Hotflashing

Basically you can follow these steps:

1. I recommend using a host machine with a intel 8** chipset and a PLCC 32 socket. This is important because the host must have a firmware hub instead of a normal bios chip.

2. Create a boot floppy and copy uniflash and the bios.bin file to it.

3. Boot to the floppy on the host machine.

4. At the dos prompt very carefully switch the firmware hub chips.

5. type uniflash.exe

6. When the menu comes up choose to flash the bios including the bootblock.

7. it will ask you for a bios name put bios.bin

8. it will start to flash the bios, DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING UNTIL IT IS DONE!

9. After this is done you can shut off the host machine and unplug it.

10. Switch back the firmware hub chips and your done.

This is at your own discression, do not hold me responsible if you kill your machine.