Flash a Via Artigo A2000 from a USB Flash Drive
This process could really apply to any computer you want to flash, but since the Artigo typically will not have a CD-ROM attached, this is probably a common problem with the Artigo. Here’s what I did:
Download the HP Drive Key Boot Utility
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839
Use a Windows XP machine to format the flash drive. Size doesn’t really matter as it will act like a floppy when you’re done. Unfortunately, this utility didn’t work when I tried it from Vista, so hopefully you have an older XP machine around, or possibly it would work in the XP mode of Windows 7. I don’t yet have my copy to try.
Format the drive using a DOS image from:
http://www.bootdisks.us/ms-dos/5/ms-dos-bootable-cd-images.html
When I booted from my Artigo, oddly it didn’t find the USB flash drive until I told it to look at the USB-ZIP in the BIOS options. I don’t know why that particular option worked, but it did.
After you have DOS booted up, you can pull the USB drive and put the VIA flashing utility and BIOS on the drive. Since 1.44MB doesn’t give you enough space to include these files along with the rest of DOS, you might want to delete the other files from the USB flash drive when you’re done. Or use a second flash drive.
It would be nice if VIA made it a little easier to do this with a flash utility which ran from Linux, but I am not going to hold my breath.