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Create a Bootable FreeDOS USB Drive on Windows
Why a Bootable USB Drive?
Most computers sold these days don't have a 3.5" floppy drive, yet many computer manufacturers still only provide BIOS flash utilities that require booting to a DOS environment. Luckily there is a free version of DOS called FreeDOS and a utility called UNetbootin to the rescue. Using these two free programs you can create a bootable USB drive that will enable you to flash your BIOS.
If you're looking for the directions to do this on Linux, check out the posts titled Create a Bootable FreeDOS USB Drive on Linux With UNetbootin and Create a Bootable USB Drive with Ubuntu and FreeDOS.
Download and Run UNetbootin
Download the Windows version of UNetbootin from the UNetbootin homepage on SourceForge.net and save it to your computer. Insert an empty USB drive into one of your USB ports. Double click the unetbootin-windows-latest.exe file you downloaded to start the program.
Install FreeDOS to Your USB Drive
Click the drop down arrow for the == Select Distribution == field and select FreeDOS.
UNetbootin on Windows with FreeDOS
If you only have one USB drive plugged into your computer, then you should be all set with the defaults. Otherwise, select your preferred USB drive from the Drive field and then click OK. UNetbootin will then begin to download FreeDOS and install it to your USB drive.
UNetbootin on Windows Downloading and Installing FreeDOS
Once the process is complete, click Exit.
Copy the BIOS Flash Utilities
Assuming your reason for creating you bootable USB drive was to flash your BIOS, you now need to copy the BIOS flash utilities from you computer manufacturer to the USB drive.
Reboot
You can now reboot your computer to boot up to the USB flash drive. Make sure to set your computer's BIOS to boot to USB. Once you boot to FreeDOS you will end up at an A:\> prompt. The files you copied to flash the BIOS should be found under the C:\ drive. Just enter
at the A:\> prompt to access the C drive. You can then see the files with the DIR command.
Create a Bootable USB Drive with Ubuntu and FreeDOS
Sometimes you just need a DOS boot disk. Many motherboard manufacturers and computer companies only provide DOS based BIOS update utilities. A further challenge is that many computers no longer have floppy disk drives. The solution is to create a bootable USB drive that boots to FreeDOS. The beauty of this method is that you can create a DOS boot drive using only free software.
(Note: If you're looking for a way to make a bootable DOS flash drive in Windows, see: Create a Bootable FreeDOS USB Drive on Windows.)
I figured this out by reading the Gentoo Wiki and adjusted the instructions to work with Ubuntu 9.04.
First off insert the USB drive into one of your USB ports. The following steps will wipe out all of your files, so backup anything you want to keep.
Open GParted through System->Administration->Partition Editor.
Select the USB drive in the upper right corner. Make note of the device name. You'll need this later. In my case it's /dev/sdc.
Gparted USB Drive
Select the device in the lower portion of the window. Right click and select Unmount.
Select the device again and format it to FAT16 with Partition->Format to->fat 16. Click Apply to do the formatting.
Select the partition and go to Partition->Manage Flags and make sure that the device is marked as bootable.
Make Device Bootable
Your screen should look something like this now.
USB Formatted to FAT16
Close Gparted.
Open Nautilus and select your flash drive to mount it.
USB Drive in Nautilus
Download the FreeDOS image from http://odin.fdos.org/odin2005/odin1440.img and save it to the flash drive.
Create a folder called grub on your usb disk and then copy all of the files from /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc to your new grub folder. The i386-pc part is architecture specific, so this may be different for your computer.
USB grub Folder
Also copy /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk to the root of your USB drive.
Paste the following text into a text editor and save it as /media/disk/grub/menu.lst.
default=0 timeout=10 root=(hd0,0) title FreeDOS kernel /memdisk initrd /odin1440.img
Now we need to install grub to the USB drive. Open a terminal and enter the following:
Note: make sure to substitute your device name from the Partition Editor for /dev/sdc.
cd /media/disk sudo grub grub> device (hd5) /dev/sdc grub> root (hd5,0) grub> setup (hd5) grub> quit
As the Gentoo page mentioned, you may get a few non-fatal errors that you can ignore.
That's it. You can now copy your BIOS flash files to the USB drive and reboot your computer. Don't forget to set your computer's BIOS to boot to USB.
NOTE: As mentioned in the comments, it's easier to create a bootable FreeDOS USB drive with UNetbootin.