Wanted to share some experience I gained during 5 days of staying up until 3AM trying to flash using PCMCIA SATA card.
Setup:
Benq 6038
VIA 6421 SATA PCMCIA
Laptop Dell Latitude D610
After reading for few days all suggestions/guides/etc I've tried numerous times Windows XP and JungleFlasher and DosFlash32 and had no luck - always FF or 7F code (no drive detected). I've re-installed all possible drivers for PCMCIA card that I've found - 5.20C, 5.60, 5.80, modified drivers, UniAta etc - same story.
I also tried iPrep - but of course being PCMCIA card it wasn't detected in MsDos.
I've tried to boot to Slax to check if IO ports addresses were correct - there I got values different from Windows. So then tried
to use those values in Windows - blue screen of death.
In total - 5 evenings until 3AM - no luck.
And than - TaDa - I remembered about Windows 95 OSes - and that was it!
Steps:
- install Windows 95 style OS (I used Windows ME). You have to install it to hard-drive - as it doesn't support USB-based Live style images. Be careful - don't use fdisk which comes with Windows 95 to create partition for installation - it screwed up my Linux partition.
- install drivers for PCMCIA (I've used VIA 5.20C for Windows 95)
- boot and make sure that in Device Manager you can see that card is detected and marked as working
- start 'Ms Dos Prompt' from start menu
- connect your drive to PCMCIA card and power it
- launch dosflash16
- you should see your Benq drive being detected (that's it - no power cycles, no half-open trick etc)
- follow any standard guide for using dosflash
Overall, it took me 5 min to do all the flashing!!!
Enjoy!