The stock BIOS that ships with the Asus 1215N is a fine BIOS... for a stock system. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow access to more than 2.8GB worth of RAM. As most people upgrade their systems, this is a bit of a downer - adding another 2GB for only 800MB more usable is no good.
Fortunately, updating the BIOS is easy - once you know the trick. Remember all that "Create a DOS boot CD, run the flasher" rubbish? No more! The Asus EZ-Flash system lets you flash directly from a USB stick (or, possibly, other media - but as the 1215N only has a USB port, it's the one we're using).
The trick is that if you try it, it probably won't work.
Why? EZ-Flash seems to require a hideous FAT16 filesystem to function. It also seems to require that the ROM be named "1215N.ROM" (for unknown reasons possibly related to old junk on my USB key). If this is enough for you to succeed, awesome, otherwise read on...
Creating a FAT16 filesystem is relatively easy under Windows.
This WILL blow away any old data on your USB key. This should be obvious...
Delete the partitions, create a new one (or just use the RAW partition - this works too), and then create a "FAT" filesystem. Not a FAT32 filesystem - just FAT.
Copy the ROM from the Asus download site to the USB key as "1215N.ROM" and then reboot with the USB stick in.
After rebooting, in the BIOS, press Alt-F2 repeatedly. The system should recognize the USB key and flash the BIOS, opening up your full amount of RAM!
From what I hear, the system can support 8GB, but I think 8GB in a netbook starts to get into "Wait... what?" category. However, it might be worth trying if you're doing something RAM-heavy and CPU-light...
Portable-compute on!
Hey! great article. I just tried it out but ezflash gets stuck at "reading 1215N.ROM". Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteAre you sure you created a FAT16 filesystem/partition? It's easy to not do that properly under Linux.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to say thanks for this post! I never would've figured out the EZFlash procedure on my own. Just updated my 1215N and it was a piece of cake.
ReplyDeleteI'm soooooo glad to be done with floppy flashing.
Thanks again!
Glad it was useful! This seems to be one of my more popular posts. I have seen confirmed reports that the 1215N can support 8GB of RAM as well - I've been tempted to upgrade, but I really don't even fully use 4GB.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't work -- stuck at "reading 1215N.ROM".
ReplyDeleteBtw you can properly create fat16 partitions with gparted on Linux
ReplyDeleteEither way I did it with windows xp and I'm still stuck at reading file, trying to update to r902. Maybe a different release will work... ?
It took me an hour or so to get a flash drive formatted as FAT - finally found this utility and made it happen. Sat too long at "READING ROM" but suddenly it was over. thanks!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ehow.com/how_5982304_partition-usb-flash-card.html