JC
10-20-2001, 07:13 PM
Ever wonder what this is?
Your computers Bios is actually a Rom Chip on your mother board. ROM is a memory chip, unlike Ram Memory which forgets everything when power is shut off the ROM does not forget.
This ROM chip is needed to tell your computer HOW to run as it is bieng turned on even before the computer can access the Harddrive for additional infomation.
It tells of important stuff like what kind of hard drive is attacked and how to manage power,what kind of ram,what kind of video card(weather to use built in sound or video rather than a separate card),How to assign IRQ and DMA, tells what kind of processor you have so it knows how fast to set other things to correspond, Lets you set system passwords etc..Basically tells how to connect the parts together so things can boot up ok.
Every computer has a Bios, And many times the Bios needs to be updated 'flashed' in order to take advantage of new technology, Or more commonly the latest greatest motherboards which are hurried into the market before there time, to finish getting the bugs out. Just like software motherboards are not always foolproof and often the first versions have conflicts with certain systems.
To access your Bios is easy, Just keep pressing the 'delete' button as your PC is booting up. Then you can navigate thru the menus by using the arrows keys ect. (mouse don't work yet). Finnally any changes made will not be activated till you exit and press 'save new changes' so if you don't want to save any changes press 'exit without saving changes'..easy and no real fear of messing anything up.
What I do when I want to play around with settings (many things in there can be changed to beef up your system and get full advantage of components) is to change something then exit let it boot and depending if I like the change change, reboot and change it back again.
Be sure to remember what you changed and onyl do one change at a time so you will know exactly how to change it back.
I dont think you can make any changes that will keep you from accessing the Bios again and change them back so your pretty free to mess around. Even if you do something stupid like set a boot password and then forget it. You can get passed this by pulling the tiny watch battery on your motherboard or pressing the reset jumper on motherboard and start all over with default settings.
Oh yea don't press 'reset configuration settings" either when in Bios this will change back to default also and screw you up if you don't understand how to set stuff.
Well thats todays tutorial..now go ahead and reboot and take a peek and see your settings.
Often times settings will be set wrong and you bnever know it. ie. Your ram speed is PC133 and your bios has it set for PC100.(this means your not using the full potencial of your ram).
A good Video card will need to be set at 4x AGP and it will instead be at 2X.
Your cpu speed might not be set to the full speed thus not running that speed. You can also use this to 'over-clock' your CPU too.
Take a look at it now so when your PC dies on you you know where to look for help.
Your computers Bios is actually a Rom Chip on your mother board. ROM is a memory chip, unlike Ram Memory which forgets everything when power is shut off the ROM does not forget.
This ROM chip is needed to tell your computer HOW to run as it is bieng turned on even before the computer can access the Harddrive for additional infomation.
It tells of important stuff like what kind of hard drive is attacked and how to manage power,what kind of ram,what kind of video card(weather to use built in sound or video rather than a separate card),How to assign IRQ and DMA, tells what kind of processor you have so it knows how fast to set other things to correspond, Lets you set system passwords etc..Basically tells how to connect the parts together so things can boot up ok.
Every computer has a Bios, And many times the Bios needs to be updated 'flashed' in order to take advantage of new technology, Or more commonly the latest greatest motherboards which are hurried into the market before there time, to finish getting the bugs out. Just like software motherboards are not always foolproof and often the first versions have conflicts with certain systems.
To access your Bios is easy, Just keep pressing the 'delete' button as your PC is booting up. Then you can navigate thru the menus by using the arrows keys ect. (mouse don't work yet). Finnally any changes made will not be activated till you exit and press 'save new changes' so if you don't want to save any changes press 'exit without saving changes'..easy and no real fear of messing anything up.
What I do when I want to play around with settings (many things in there can be changed to beef up your system and get full advantage of components) is to change something then exit let it boot and depending if I like the change change, reboot and change it back again.
Be sure to remember what you changed and onyl do one change at a time so you will know exactly how to change it back.
I dont think you can make any changes that will keep you from accessing the Bios again and change them back so your pretty free to mess around. Even if you do something stupid like set a boot password and then forget it. You can get passed this by pulling the tiny watch battery on your motherboard or pressing the reset jumper on motherboard and start all over with default settings.
Oh yea don't press 'reset configuration settings" either when in Bios this will change back to default also and screw you up if you don't understand how to set stuff.
Well thats todays tutorial..now go ahead and reboot and take a peek and see your settings.
Often times settings will be set wrong and you bnever know it. ie. Your ram speed is PC133 and your bios has it set for PC100.(this means your not using the full potencial of your ram).
A good Video card will need to be set at 4x AGP and it will instead be at 2X.
Your cpu speed might not be set to the full speed thus not running that speed. You can also use this to 'over-clock' your CPU too.
Take a look at it now so when your PC dies on you you know where to look for help.