Category: Open Source

Possible gnome-cups-manager README file improvement

A realistic ending to the gnome-cups-manager README file, courtesy of Kevin Warns. Somebody should submit this back to Gnome SVN…

New (sad, morbid, realistic) ending:

43 The little girl looked up at him. “What are you?” she asked.
44
45 “I’m a printer!” said the printer.
46
47 “A what?” asked the little girl.
48
49 “A printer! Surely you’ve heard of me. I make paper copies of things
50 on your computer!”, replied the printer.
51
52 “In today’s all-digital world, there is no reason for you to exist!” said
53 the little girl.
54
55 The printer was devastated. He spent the rest of the day slitting his cables
56 and praying for the cold darkness to overcome him and take away his pain.

Upgrading the BIOS on an EEE PC (with Linux)

This took me a while to figure out, so I wrote directions to hopefully make it easier for other people.

  1. First, you need to get the proper firmware for the EEE PC you are going to flash. Go to http://www.asus.com/ and find the latest firmware for your model.
  2. Extract the *.ROM file from the *.zip file, and place it on your Desktop.
  3. Rename the *.ROM file to [MODEL].ROM. (For example, the EEE PC 1000 would be named “1000.ROM”, 1000H would be “1000H.ROM”) Due to how the boot block was written, the name is case sensitive apparently.
  4. Insert your flash device, unmount it (if it gets automatically mouted,) and open it with fdisk. Set it up like the following: 
    #fdisk /dev/sdd

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdd: 129 MB, 129499136 bytes
17 heads, 32 sectors/track, 464 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 544 * 512 = 278528 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks    Id   System
/dev/sdd1               1         465      126448    6  FAT16
  5. Now that you have the drive properly partitioned, we need to format it. 
    #mkfs.msdos -F 16 /dev/sdd1
  6. After the format completes (and your device activity comes to a halt), unplug the flash drive, plug it back in, and if necessary, unmount the device if it automatically mounts.
  7. Mount it with the following command: 
    #mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt/temp/ -o rw,flush,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=win95
  8. Now, copy the renamed *.ROM file to the flash device. After you copy it, refresh the listings to make sure everything is in uppercase. If not, rename it, and try again.
  9. If everything is good, then we can unmount the device. 
    #umount /dev/sdd1
  10. Now we can start the flashing process. With the flash device still plugged into the system, restart the system. As soon as you see the BIOS screen, hold down Alt, and hit F2. This should load up the BIOS updater from the boot block.
  11. Now just wait for it to find your flash device, and the *.ROM file on it. If it halts at “Reading file 1000.ROM”, or similar, you did something wrong. Otherwise, it should look similiar to this: 
    Boot Block Compatible Version Ver.026
Please do NOT insert any disc into CD-ROM or Floppy drive
if you want to recovery with an USB device.
EZ-Flash starting BIOS update.....
DO KEEP the power supply on and NOT touch the system while performing BIOS
update.
Checking for USB Device...
USB Device found.
Reading file "1000.ROM".  Completed.
Start Erasing...\
Start Programming.../
Start Erasing EC Firmware...
Start Programming EC Firmware...

The BIOS update is finished.
Please press power button to shut down the system.
  12. After the BIOS update is completed, your BIOS settings will revert back to factory defaults. It will prompt you when you restart that the settings were lost, and everything was reverted. It will ask you to hit F1 to enter Setup. Do that.
  13. Change everything back to how it was. One thing I should note: It disables the Wireless, Camera, and Bluetooth for some reason. Enable these again in the BIOS if you want them.