Trouble updating BIOS on a PowerEdge SC1420

[Chad Scott]

I'm currently on A03 and A04 is the latest... the tools download the
RPM and it's installed in /usr/share/firmware, and apply_updates seems
to work fine.

However, upon reboot, I see an error that the image failed one or more
consistency checks.

Vital stats (CentOS):
[root at london ~]# uname -a
Linux london 2.6.9-42.0.2.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Aug 23 00:17:26 CDT 2006
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[root at london ~]# getSystemId
Libsmbios:    0.12.3
System ID:    0x0173
Service Tag:  FNBWS81
Express Service Code: 34062462433
Product Name: PowerEdge SC1420
BIOS Version: A03
Vendor:       Dell Inc.
Is Dell:      1

[root at london ~]# apply_updates --yes

Searching storage directory for available BIOS updates...

Checking system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x0173) - a03
        Found Update: system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x0173) - a04

Found out of date packages.

Running updates...
Installing system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x0173) - a04

After an init 6, I see the error at POST and no update takes place.

Any thoughts how/why the image is inconsistent?  Any debugging steps I
should take?

Thanks,
Chad