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Info
The BIOS (which stands for basic input / output system) is the central nervous system of a computer. It is vital to ensuring the smooth operation of your PC. It handles all the grunt work and housekeeping chores required to keep your PC operating. This includes cache and disk access, IDE controllers, system timing, and serial/parallel ports. The BIOS is the first thing operating when you turn on your PC and is visible on your screen as it loads the operating system.
Since the BIOS is so important to your PC, it is necessary to know how to manipulate it. Over the years, the BIOS has advanced to the point where it now has many user defined options. Today's BIOS can auto-detect drives as well as many other types of hardware through plug-n-play, in addition to offering advanced power management. Many of the recent improvements have been incorporated to reduce the amount of time a user must spend configuring the BIOS settings. There is no doubt you will need to go into your BIOS at some time. Besides, if you are interested in getting the best performance out of your machine, the BIOS settings should be your second language (just kidding).
Below is a list of articles in this section. Note that due to all of the different BIOS versions on the market, it is impossible for me to address all available settings as well as name them right. Some BIOS's call the same setting different things.
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Advanced Settings
This section of the BIOS looks like Greek to most people. It controls more of the nitty gritty of the system. Below we will look at the settings in this area. Keep in mind that some of these will vary depending on the year and brand of your BIOS.
Virus Warning
This will control the virus detection abilities of your BIOS, if your BIOS has such a thing. It basically monitors the boot sector and notifies you if anything tries to write to it. Award BIOS now incorporates Trend virus detection in their BIOS, so you will see a BIOS option for that as well. You can either enable or disable it, although it may cause problems with some Disk Utilities such as Nortons. Plus, a full anti-virus program is better.
Typematic Rate programming
Disabled recommended. This feature must be supported by the keyboard. If enabled, you have two settings to specify. The Typematic rate delay is the amount of time the system will wait when holding a key down before it will start repeating the value of that key. Set it to 500 for 500ms delay. The typematic rate (chars/sec) is how fast the value will be repeated when the key is held down. Set to whatever you want. 15 is good.
Above 1MB Memory Test
Disabled recommended. This controls whether the POST will test all system memory for errors upon boot-up. This is made redundant by DOS's HIMEM.SYS, so save boot time and leave it disabled.
Memory Tick Sound
Controls whether you hear an audible clicking while the memory is being counted at boot-up. Kinda trivial, if you ask me.
Memory Parity Error Check
Controls whether the memory is checked for errors. This is done by looking at a ninth bit of data which is a parity value. The parity bit is set so that the parity of all bits together is odd. When checked, if the parity of the byte does not have an odd value, then the system issue a Non-Maskable Interrupt, or NMI, and stops. On some boards, you can disable this feature altogether, but enabled is recommended if your memory supports it.
Wait for F1
This controls whether the system will wait for you to press F1 after any error before continuing with the boot process. Disabled is good for faster boot-up or for file servers, but enabled will make sure you see every error if there is one.
Boot Up NumLock Status
Specifies whether the NumLock will be activated on start-up or not.
Numeric Processor Test
If you have a processor with math coprocessor, which all modern processors have, then enable this function. Disabling it means that the system will ignore the FPU, significantly decreasing performance if your processor DOES have one. Disable only with a old processor without an FPU or coprocessor.
Floppy Drive Seek at Boot
Controls whether the Floppy drive A is powered up at boot-up. Disable for a faster boot-up and longer lasting floppy drive.
Boot Sequence
Controls the order in which the BIOS looks for a bootable device on start-up. Depending on your hardware, there may be a variety of options available here, including booting off the ZIP drive or LS-120 (if your BIOS supports this). Most users have this set to A, C. This makes the system look at the A: drive first for a system disk before going to the hard drive. If you are using SCSI drives, the set to A, SCSI.
Bootup CPU Speed
Set to High. If any problems, try Low.
External Cache Memory
Most systems today have L2 cache, therefore it is recommended for most to have this enabled for increased performance. It is common for users to have L2 cache and have this option disabled. This leads to a slower machine. If you do not have L2 cache, then disable this. If it is enabled and you don't have it, the system will probably lock up.
Internal Cache Memory
Enabled for most. This enables any L1 cache on-board your CPU. Most modern CPU's, 486 or higher, have this. If not, leave it disabled.
Fast gate A20 option
A20 refers to the first 64K of extended memory, known as the high memory area. This option controls whether this chunk of memory is used to control all memory above 1MB. In older systems this was traditionally handled by the keyboard controller chip. For faster performance, enable this.
Turbo Switch
Disable recommended on most systems.
Shadow Memory Cacheable
Enable for faster performance. This copies BIOS code to system RAM for faster access. Disable if there are any problems.
Video ROM Shadow
A relic from the past. When enabled, it copies code from the video portion of your BIOS over to RAM for faster access. In old DOS games, this sped up video performance. But, with Windows, it does not help. Since Windows games use API's like DirectX to write directly to the video card bypassing BIOS, enabling this option could decrease stability of your system since games could overwrite video instructions in RAM.
Adapter ROM Shadow...
This is followed by some cryptic memory addresses. This controls whether you want to shadow the ROM on any adapter cards on your system. Because you need to know what card take what memory addresses in order to use this wisely, it is recommended that this be disabled just like Video ROM shadow.
Quick Power on Self Test
This option enables a quicker boot-up by skipping some of the internal diagnostics that would usually take place on start-up. It makes boot-up faster, but also leaves you more susceptible to errors wince some problems will not be detected at start-up.
IDE HDD Block Mode
Enabling this function can speed up IDE drives by allowing multiple sector read/write operations, a feature most modern IDE drives support. For Win 9x, give it a whirl. Under NT, Microsoft recommends it is disabled to prevent data corruption.
Report No FDD for Windows 95
This setting fools Windows 9x into thinking there is no floppy controller installed, thus freeing up that IRQ. If you're on a laptop with no internal floppy drive, you should enable this as well as disable the FDD controller in Integrated Peripherals.
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Setting Up
This is the most commonly changed section of the CMOS setup. When you first go into your CMOS setup, this is the first option available to you. Hit Enter to go into "Standard CMOS Setup".
Here's a rundown of the options:
Date (mm:dd:yy):
Used to set the system date.
Time (hh:mm:ss)
Set the system clock. You may want to do this every once in a while. The system clock is not the most accurate clock in the world.
Hard Disks
Usually, this will be a little table showing all installed IDE hard disks and their settings. Typically, these settings are all set to Auto, meaning the BIOS senses the settings automatically for you. In some BIOS, though, you may need to do this yourself. Three options are usually allowed. These are "Auto", "User", or "None". "User" means that you will specify the hard disk settings yourself. "None" means that you are telling the computer there is no hard disk on that IDE channel.
Note: Since some knowledge of hard drive structure is needed to understand these settings, you can go to the hard drive section to find the info.
If set to "User", the settings are:
Size: Usually set automatically depending on the settings for heads, sectors, and cylinders.
Cylinders: The number of cylinders on hard disk. Should be written on drive.
Heads: Number of heads. Should be written on drive.
Write precompensation: Not much used on modern drives. It was used to accomodate drives that had the same number of sectors per track, including both the inner and outer tracks. On SCSI drives, set this to -1. On IDE drives, it is not necessary to worry about it as it will be determined automatically.
Landing zone: Used for drives that don't have auto-parking. All modern drives do, so just set to 0.
Sector: Number of sectors per track. It's often 17 for MFM drives, and 26 for RLL drives.
Floppy Drive A
Used to choose the type of floppy drive you are using for Drive A. The most common setting is 1.44M, 3.5", but you should change it depending on your hardware.
Floppy Drive B
Same as Floppy Drive A. If you only have one floppy drive, set this setting to NONE.
Primary Display / Video
Choose the type of video display adapter you use. Most commonly set to VGA. If you have two video cards, use the primary display to dictate this setting.
Keyboard
If you do not have a keyboard installed, this option tells the BIOs to skip the keyboard test in the POST. this is useful for computers such as servers that may be booted without a keyboard.
Halt On
Tells the BIOS which errors to skip in the POST. For example, if you want the BIOS POST to continue whether or not it gets an error on a missing keyboard, set this to "All, but keyboard".
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The Basics
As mentioned in the introduction, the BIOS is the core to the operation of your PC. It is the framework for your computer to be able to run the rest of its software. It performs the POST, or Power On Self Test. This is the sequence of system checks the BIOS goes through every time your turn on your system.
The BIOS is what underlies the operating system. In a way, the operating system is a simplified user-interface to the BIOS. This is of course rather exaggerated, since the OS is also very core to your system. But, without the BIOS, the operating system does not do anything. For instance, when you hit a key on your keyboard, the processor performs an interrupt to read that key. This interrupt is handled by the BIOS, which assigns and manages the interrupts. This is similar for other components on the system, which also operate by interrupts. By using this method, the processor is able to conduct many jobs at once in regards to other hardware.
BIOS is often confused with CMOS. The two are often, and mistakenly, thought of to be one and the same. Actually, CMOS, which stands for Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, is the little 64 byte piece of RAM which stores the settings for the BIOS to work off of. It is because of the CMOS that the BIOS remembers your PC's configuration and is able to load it properly upon each boot-up. The CMOS resides in a small integrated circuit, or IC, found on your motherboard. The memory is maintained by a small current generated by a battery which also resides on your motherboard. Newer board use a NiCad battery which recharges whenever the PC is on, but the older ones use a standard battery, which when it runs out of juice, must be replaced. In a similar fashion, if you wish, for some reason, to clear your CMOS and start fresh, simply disconnect the battery. Of course, on newer boards, there is a CMOS-clear jumper, usually located near the battery, which performs the same function.
BIOS Setup
The BIOS setup is an area where you can configure your computer based on the hardware that is in it. It allows you to change the BIOS settings, which in turn changes the way the BIOS configures your chipset.
BIOS setup has been complicated by the growing complexity of computer hardware. As new technology comes out, the BIOS too must grow to support them. This combines with the problem of little standardization. since there are many BIOS makers, as well as many chipset and motherboard makers, the whole scene has been quite complicated. The BIOS setup, therefore, is really not well documented in most motherboard manuals. In some cases, technicians themselves find themselves baffled by some of the settings availible in the BIOS setup.
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