Thoughts from the abyss

So I’m still annoyed from something the other day. I had to work a little late a few evenings ago to update the BIOS and diagnostics firmware in a couple of IBM xSeries 235’s. Why do corporations still insist of using tiny ass floppies to put images on?!?! I don’t get it. I mean hardly any computer or server ships these days with a floppy drive even in them, so why can’t they put the firmware images onto a CD. Or better yet, just upload the images onto their websites and offer them in the form of ISO images….whoa, yeah I know that’s a new one. So anyways, I’ve found one thing I really dislike about IBM now, and it’s not just them that do this.

Instead of offering you a pack of images for your server or PC line on an ISO image to burn to CD, you have to dick around with multiple floppy disks. Then of course it’s inevitable that you get a bad floppy disk or two and you have to make another one. Remember though, since the flash process is dependent on more than one disk, your server/PC is sitting there in limbo on a flash script, while you scurry back to your machine to make another damn floppy disk. AHHHH! I wonder what happens when you’ve only loaded disk 1 of 2 and the power goes out, because you know not everyone has battery backups (I do of course), but I’m just trying to make a point here.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make a bootable image off a floppy and onto a CD from Linux, but damnit I just shouldn’t have to! Especially when my manager pays IBM metric-shitloads of money for contracts a year. They should go out of their way to provide an easy firmware update process. And before anyone says, well you can flash firmware through Windoze…I trust little floppy disks much more than I do Microsoft to flash my BIOS and firmware for me…please. This is the year 2006 you know. Ok, I’m done…</Rant>