Question :
I need to run a firmware update for a hard drive, but there’s no firmware update available for MacOSX, there’s only a firmware .exe-program for MS DOS.
How can I run that on my Mac, since I don’t have a Windows-PC available ?
Answer :
MacOSX isn’t able to run DOS commands in the MacOSX Terminal.app…
and running FreeDOS from a USB-stick isn’t an option on your Mac, since your Mac can’t boot from non-EFI volumes…
but there’s a very simple option to run DOS commands in OSX :
– download & install Boxer by drag&dropping the app into your Applications folder
– run the Boxer.app and you will get 3 options, one being “Open a DOS prompt”, that’s the one your looking for
– click on it, and you will have your DOS-prompt
– and just as you can in OSX Terminal.app, you can drag&drop .exe-files (and other files) into the prompt, and the correct path to the file will be automatically inserted into the prompt
– there’s just one small drawback : the Mac’s keyboard layout is not supported… so even though the letters will be what you see on your keyboard, most other characters will not… to get a – [minus], you should type / [slash], and to get ” [brace], you should type @ [at] on your Mac keyboard… (you can figure out the other ones yourself by just trying)
That’s it !
Enjoy !
😉
MacManus.nl 
thank u sooo much……its just what i needed…….cheers
@himanschu kumar :
You’re welcome !
enjoy 😉
were you able to upgrade the drive’s firmware? do you have to mount the drive into boxer in order for it to be seen?
@Marco Minniti :
Good question !
Yes, I was able to update the (external) drive’s firmware this way.
Even though I tested this back in 2014, when we were still on OSX 10.9 Mavericks (with OSX 10.10 Yosemite just days away), I have not reason to assume this would no longer work,
so my suggestion would be : do try (provided you’re not a computer newbie)
enjoy !