BIOS and CMOS

Adding personality to your PC

We Need to Talk!
The CPU needs some method to talk to
the devices to tell them what to do
The devices need some way to send data
to, and receive data from the CPU
We need to expand our logical model from
the CPU chapter

CPU

RAM

Northbridge
Address Bus

EDB

CPU

RAM

Northbridge
Address Bus

EDB

Southbridge
keyboard

Video Card

Hard Disk Drive

Chipset
Address Bus
Northbridge

CPU

RAM
EDB

Chipset
Southbridge

Keyboard
Controller
Hard Disk Drive

Video Card

845 Chipset

925 Chipset

Keyboard
How we communicate with the keyboard

Problems
Different motherboards have different
keyboard controllers
We need specific code to talk to the
controller
We need a place to store this specific
programming and the programming for
other devices (optical drive, floppy, etc.)

Solution
Use a ROM chip
Does not forget when power is removed,
like RAM does
Specific to motherboard and devices on it
Read only, code does not change
Can hold lots of programs, like a chapter
book
Called firmware

IBMs BIOS

BIOS
BIO

Patent fence around BIOS

Making a ROM chip

We burn the code into the chip:

System ROM
Holds all the support programming for
basic devices
Is given a specific address space, or
range of memory addresses for its code

The First Megabyte

Upper Memory

1 MB
(384 KB)
640 KB

Conventional Memory

Address 0

Basic Hardware

CPU
Mouse
Keyboard
Video card
RAM
Network card

Sound Card
Floppy drive
Hard Disk drive
Zip drive
USB ports
CD-ROM drive

Basic Hardware

CPU
Mouse
Keyboard
Video card
RAM
Network card

Sound Card
Floppy drive
Hard Disk drive
Zip drive
USB ports
CD-ROM drive

Stored Information
Stores access/write code for keyboard
Stores access/write code for system
speaker
Stores access/write code for other chips
(functions) on motherboard
Does not change (more on this in a
moment)

CMOS
Complimentary Metal Oxide
Semiconductor how it was made
Stores specific information about your
system:
Amount of RAM present
Type of hard disk drive
Date and Time

Needs battery power to remember when

power is off

Chipset
Address Bus
Northbridge

CPU

RAM
EDB

Chipset
Southbridge

BIOS
And
CMOS

Keyboard
Controller
20

Mouse

Video Card

BIOS
All devices need BIOS code to
interoperate with CPU. Some is stored
directly in System BIOS chip, most is
stored elsewhere.
One of the functions of BIOS is to provide
the CMOS Setup Utility, or Setup, which
allows us to change CMOS data.

BIOS
information

CMOS
information

CMOS or Setup
Option to use this program is early in the
boot cycle long before system loads
Operating System
Different key(s) to enter different Setups
You should only get to Setup on purpose
Program stored in BIOS, but only edits
data in CMOS
First CMOS was set of switches!

Who makes BIOS?

Same parent
Award Software
company
Phoenix Technologies
AMI American Megatrends Inc.
They write BIOS with lots of options;
motherboard maker picks sections to be
used
Long gone are IBMs patents on BIOS

Setup
Lots of screens and subscreens
You dont need to know about all settings
on all screens
Motherboard book is mildly helpful on
some options
You should know generally where things
can be found

Date and Time and

Usually on the first screen, or first menu
choice
Lets you set Date, Time, floppy present
(will autodetect it), memory count, hard
drive(s) present (again, autodetected)

Here is where
you set the boot
order

When adding a
modem, you might
want to turn both of
these off.

Old CMOS
Stored the hard drive geometry which
was NOT found on the drives label
Old systems had a nasty habit of loosing
CMOS data and requiring a trip to the
repair shop to get fixed
I spent many an hour hacking drive
geometry values by trial and error

15

New CMOS
Did you notice the High Performance
option?
Did you see the Setup Defaults option?
BIOS can talk to hard disk drive and get
all the information it needs.
About the worst that happens today is the
need to reset date and time.

Chip Evolution
EPROM Erasable Programmable ROM;
used ultra-violet light (sunlight) to erase
EEPROM Electrically Erasable what
we use today
Flash ROM another name for EEPROM
NVRAM Non-volatile RAM. Really not
so, still needs battery power

The Three-In-One
We have BIOS that stores code and
access program to CMOS
We have CMOS that stores changeable
information about our system
We have RTC (Real Time Clock) that
keeps track of date and time
All three are now rolled into one chip

Easy way to spot

this chip is by the
shinny label

About that Battery

Should last 5 to 10 years
You can find them at Savon even
If your system forgets date and/or time, its
time to replace the battery
Beware the evil ESD!

More Battery
Sometimes we WANT to reset CMOS:
A forgotten password
Too aggressive overclocking
Incorrect low-level settings on some screen

Either move the jumper, or pull the battery

Do either for about 10 seconds
If you are to pull battery, make sure you
unplug system too

10

More BIOS
Option ROM put a BIOS chip on the
card/device
Video is most common for this
SCSI cards
Network cards have socket, chip is extra

Software Solutions
Device Drivers very flexible, but must
wait until OS starts loading.
CONFIG.SYS DOS utility program, runs
before DOS really gets going
SYSTEM.INI Introduced with Win 1 to 3,
another text file. Win 9x wont boot without
it; XP will
The Registry Introduced with Win 95.
Binary database of information

Software Help
Control Panel Graphical window to the
Registry
Device Manager Another graphical path
to the Registry
REGISTRY EDITOR(s):
REGEDIT
REGEDT32

Power On Self Test (POST)

First thing to run when you start up
computer
Waits for power good signal from power
supply, then starts the CPU
FFFA is (almost) at the end of 1st meg of
RAM, contains a Jump Immediate
instruction to beginning of POST code
CPU instructs our short list items to
check themselves out with own diagnostic

POST, cont.
Until video card is done, we are in the
dark and could get Beep Codes for
errors. Dont memorize them. Constant
beeping is either memory or video error.
Once the video card has checked itself
out, we could get error codes/messages
on the monitor as other devices report
status
5

POST, cont.
About this time, we get the option to run
CMOS Setup routine
POST is done; control passes to
Bootstrap Loader. Its job is to find OS.
Looks for the Boot Sector on floppy/hard
disk drive(s)

A disk with functional OS is called a

Bootable Disk or System Disk. Could
be floppy (DOS), CD or hard disk drive.

Boot Order
Somewhere in CMOS Setup is the ability
to set the boot order, or the order in which
the bootstrap loader will search for an OS.
I set my systems to: CD/DVD drive, floppy
and then hard disk drive.
Usually, if a bootable CD is found, you get
the option to boot from it (by pressing any
key). Do nothing and loader continues the
search for an OS.

POST Cards
Can be purchased; probably about extinct
now.
I could have used one about three times in
my career so far.
If another (known good) video card and/or
memory wont boot, motherboard is
toasted.

Flashing the BIOS

Mess up the process and motherboard is
history
Wont allow you to swap 486 for P4 chip
Most processes require a bootable floppy
with special program and very odd
command line
Some newer motherboards include Flash
as Setup option.
I would rather eat a bug

UEFI
At least Sandy Bridge processor and
current motherboard.
32/64-bit replacement for BIOS
Allows use of 3 TB+ drives without
partitioning it down
Good topic for an Internet search some
rainy Saturday