Tutorials
08
May
2019
PC Engines APU motherboard BIOS update

(Update of 2020 06 09 with version 4.12.0.1 and version 4.0.30 legacy branch)

We are often asked how to update the BIOS of the APU PC motherboard.

The information can be found at these addresses https://pcengines.ch/howto.htm#bios and https://pcengines.github.io/

This consists of downloading TinyCore, flashing it on an SD card, then downloading the desired BIOS and copying it to the SD card.

When you have several versions of APU card namely 2, 3, 4 or 5, you have to make several downloads.

It also happens to want to go back to a previous version or to the old "legacy" branch. When you want to flash a new or old BIOS, sometime there is no access to the internet or with slow internet access.


At Rack Matrix Technology, we made an SD card that contains all possible BIOS versions to be able to flash the desired BIOS quickly. This card is very useful on our assembly line, to flash the right BIOS required by customers.

 

So we decided to share the contents of our SD card used to update the BIOS of all APU cards.

The peculiarity of this card is that it has as much file as APU card model and also the files of the branch "legacy". In each folder there are all BIOS versions published from the beginning. The advantage is that you can choose the BIOS version according to your needs.

  • Download the image of the SD card here (compressed HDD Raw Copy format)
  • The SD card has a minimum size of 8G.
  • Flash this image with HDD Raw copy
  • Insert this SD card into the SD slot of the APU to be updated.
  • Connect a console emulator (like kitty, putty, etc.) to the serial port of the APU. (115200 baud rate, 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit)
  • Connect the power supply to the APU and follow the instructions.