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Thread: AWARD BIOS Question(s)

  1. #1
    Senior Member
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    Jun 2002
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    148

    AWARD BIOS Question(s)

    I am on one of my learning adventures again. Today I decided to learn as much as I can about BIOS, as my long term goal is to make an operating system I need to learn BIOS eventualy. I found a program called ctbios15 and one called amimbid, they are suposed to gather information about your motherboard through the BIOS ID and such. ctbios15 worked but it was in another language, i think german or something, amimbid did not get my any info at all. At startup, i wrote down the numbers at the botom of the screen, I looked them up at www.wimsbios.com
    I found my version of bios and the corosponding motherboard chipset. I was woundering since ctbios was not in english does anyone know of such a utility that is in english?
    In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom
    which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. But must I know what must not come, for I shale become those of knowledgedome. Peace~

  2. #2
    The Iceman Cometh
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    1,209
    I would recommend simply going to the BIOS manufacturer and reading information there. AWARD BIOS, for example, has been bought out by Phoenix Technologies (as seen here: http://www.award.com/) If you look through Phoenix's site, they have information regarding how thier BIOS works, how to set it up, how it interacts with the OS, etc. Hope that helps.

    AJ

  3. #3
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
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    148
    10X, I did find the information manualy, but I wanted a short cut incase I ever lost the info and wanted it back with ease, the program I downloaded worked great except for the fact that it was in a language I could not read, and since it was in a DOS windows, I could not just copy and paste the text into a translator such as the one google has. But I will be sure to check out their web site. Thanks for the help.
    In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom
    which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. But must I know what must not come, for I shale become those of knowledgedome. Peace~

  4. #4
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2002
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    143
    Here are some web sites where you can get information regarding the BIOS:

    Mini-Tutorials/Articles
    Lost Circuits http://www.lostcircuits.com/advice/bios2/1.shtml
    Bios Connections http://www.electrocution.com/biosc.htm (First 28 pages from book)
    SysOpt http://www.sysopt.com/articles/recoverbios/index.html (Recovering BIOS)

    General Info
    Abios http://abios.com/

    Tweaks
    3D Spotlight http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/bios/index.shtml

    Forum
    Bios Central http://www.bioscentral.com/wbb/main.php

    Links
    Trish’s Hardware Hell http://www.hardwarehell.com/bios.htm

    Utilities
    Unicore http://www.unicore.com/techsupport/award/awardutils.htm

    I downloaded both the Detect and CTBios programs to ensure they were in English and both worked fine. The programs will provide the following information about your BIOS (Note: Detect is specific to the Award BIOS.)
    Detect – Computer ID, BIOS Date, Award BIOS Found, Award ID String, Board/BIOS Version, OEM (Motherboard), URL (to MB manufacturer) and Chipset.
    CTBios – Program (Unicore program name), BIOS date, BIOS Type, BIOS ID (date repeated), Chipset (includes revision number if any) and Superio[sic] (MB chipset {eg Intel 486, 586}, revision number and IRQ handler port).

    For other utilities, I’d suggest going to the site for the specific motherboard manufacturer, although I have seldom found any for other than flashing.
    . . . . . vvirtho
    All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

  5. #5
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    148
    thank you all, i found those links helpfull and educational. I find the POST (power on self test) to be fascinateing, i have learned that one part of the post is to check for a bootable disk, and it does that by reading a certian memory location on each disk in the order spesified by the boot sequence, till it finds a signature that identifies it as bootable, this way if i want to make a operating system, the first step will be to make a bootable disk. I did an example with the free NASM assembler, it was a floppy, and upon boot up, the floppy gets controll because it is labled as bootable with a certian hex value, it then prints no boot disk on the monitor and frezes. It was fun.

    10X again for all the help, i will continue to look for a simular utility to the one i had.
    In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom
    which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. But must I know what must not come, for I shale become those of knowledgedome. Peace~

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