So I struggled to come up with a working solution for updating the SuperMicro motherboard bios using the IPMI with FreeDos.
One method I tried is creating a custom bootable FreeDos ISO and allowing the live environment in the boot menu. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik_PlhwZaTk
The method does have it’s potentials, I was able to get everything to boot and add the files to the ISO. However, after the ISO is booted up, I cannot access the content on the ISO itself.
The author of the video mentioned that in order the ISO to work in an IPMI environment, it need to make adjustment to the memdsk image due to the USB cdrom driver. But didn’t elaborate further on his comment… So I eventually gave up.
The second method is using this premaid ISO of FreeDos 1.1 I’ve found-> https://pingtool.org/bootable-dos-iso-bios-upgrade/
Everything is good, I’m able to put my custom files on the ISO and see the content. However, the issue comes when trying to execute the .exe file. FreeDos 1.1 have some sort of memory limitation that the SuperMicro updater (AMI_1.bat / AFUDOSU.EXE) cannot run. Tried a few things with the ISO, but couldn’t get it to update to 1.2. So gave up on this method.
I eventually found this fully working premaid ISO -> https://github.com/Starttoaster/SuperMicro-BIOS-Upgrade-Image
This ISO is based on FD1.2 and can access the content on the ISO without issue.
To load your custom files onto the ISO, simply
- Download and install MagicISO
- Open the downloaded ISO with MagicISO
- Drag your custom files into the BIOS folder
- Save the ISO
Note that if your updated is based off AFUDOSU and it complains that it cannot find it. You need to rename AFUDOSU.SMC to AFUDOSU.EXE
Then once you have it ISO booted up, run the binary manually
AFUDOSU.EXE BIOSFILENAME /P /B /N /K /R
That’s it.