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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Learned Something New About Ethernet Today
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 00:24:20 -0000 (UTC)
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On 19 Jul 2025 10:55:05 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> A quick search suggests that controller is targeted at servers.

Specifically in this case, a Lenovo server. Lots of CPU cores, lots of 
RAM, lots of network interfaces, lots of disks, lots of fans ...

Only, Lenovo insists on making firmware updaters available only through 
stupid .exe files that only run under Windows. So we had to do a temporary 
Windows Server installation just to try applying that firmware update, 
only for it to fail for some reason we couldn’t fathom. But the option to 
extract the firmware to a .rom file worked.

So we saved that to a USB stick, and then, we rebooted into the UEFI 
monitor, and it was able to load and apply that .rom file just fine.

Why couldn’t Lenovo just make the firmware available in a simple .zip 
archive to begin with? That would have saved so much trouble. Not to 
mention, not encouraging the habit among users of downloading and running 
random .exe files from random websites ...