ASRock enables UEFI flashing/updating over the Internet

[thelostswede]

One issue with having a hack is that it’s still relatively complicated to upgrade the BIOS/UEFI, as you generally have to download a Windows executable file and then figure out how to extract its contents. ASRock appears to have a neat solution coming though, where you’ll be able to update the UEFI directly from within itself.

It looks as if ASRock has planned for a wide range of usage scenarios and beyond DHCP and manually entering an IP address, there’s also support for PPPoE which should be good news for xDSL users. You’ll have to use the onboard Ethernet controller to do this though, so if you’re on Wi-Fi, this isn’t going to help much.

ASRock appears to be creating a RAM disk to store the update in, as no storage device is needed to save the file on before flashing. Currently there’s no information as to which motherboards will support this feature, but we’d expect fairly broad support. It’s quite surprising that it has taken this long for a company to bring out this feature, as it was discussed as one of the major advantages that UEFI had over BIOS back in the early days of UEFI development.

Source: Expreview (in Chinese)

 

[Terrorbyte]

Nice, I own two ASRock boards. Lets hope Asus follow suit.

 

[tonymacx86]

This is a really cool feature that I hope all of the manufacturers will start to implement.

 

[matze]

[VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAx5ifXNjR0[/VIDEO]

 

[thelostswede]

Try using the YouTube tag, it works
Thanks for the link though

 

[Craigrox]

Nice, I own two ASRock boards. Lets hope Asus follow suit.

Asus already have the EZ flash utility so it's not a chore, bang on FAT 32 USB pen and boot into BIOS tools and you're done

 

[aldouseugenio]

Nice, I own two ASRock boards. Lets hope Asus follow suit.

Asus already have the EZ flash utility so it's not a chore, bang on FAT 32 USB pen and boot into BIOS tools and you're done

Actually ASRock has the Instant Flash the same as the EZ Flash of Asus. I think Terrorbyte means that Asus needs to keep up with the majority of manufacturers that's now supporting web flashing.

Cheers,
Aldous