[PLUG] Upgrading BIOS: Dell Latitude E5410

[Rich Shepard]

   After a half-hour on the phone with a tech rep from Dell I learn that Dell
builds some portables (including some Latitude models) so that the BIOS can
be upgrade with linux (i.e., they provide the firmare as .hdr files), and
others can _only_ be upgraded via Windows or DOS. My E5410 (and its
replacement, the E5420) will run linux perfectly but the BIOSes cannot be
upgraded with this OS.

   If someone has a FreeDOS bootable USB stick on which I can copy the two
.exe files (because the BIOS version needs to be upgraded first to A10, then
A11) I would like to borrow it.

   Alternatively, if someone can teach me how to make a bootable FreeDOS USB
drive with a vfat file system rather than an iso9660 file system
(read-only) from fd11src.iso, that would work, too.

   I'm quite upset that Dell would support linux on only some models and not
others. But, since I've a lot of money invested in this laptop I want to
upgrade the BIOS so it will use all 8G of RAM and fix a few other glitches.

Rich