What is the BIOS Survival Guide?
"Information, unlike trash, is of rare occurrence on
the World Wide Web", Confucius.
If you
have an UNSOLVED BIOS problem not described
herein, please post it to related newsgroups (such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips),
or the
contributors.-
WE WILL NOT ANSWER BIOS-RELATED QUESTIONS SENT
TO US.
- You may browse through the guide using the Table
of Contents or the Index (see
above).
- BIOS settings are a frequent problem asked about in
several hardware related newsgroups. Did you ever
experienced a system lock up or poor performance and
erratic behavior due to improper BIOS settings? Have you
ever been left in the dark by a cryptic 5 pages, badly
written motherboard manual? The answer is probably yes. I
took some initiative and decided to edit a FAQ for the
AMI and AWARD BIOSes. They are, I believe, the most
common. The guide provides a description of each BIOS
function (at least those we are aware of) and tips for
their settings. I hope it will eventually help newbies
"decipher" BIOS settings and more advanced
users "optimize" their system. It could even
keep you from a painful and pointless visit to your local
computer store! Phil Croucher is now sharing this task
with me.
-
- Copyright 1994-97, Jean-Paul Rodrigue, All rights
reserved.
- Copyright 1996-97, Phil Croucher, All rights reserved.
ISBN 1 872498 07 7
This document is provided as is.
The editors and contributors take no responsibilities for
any problems, damages, humiliations, world wars or loss
of sanity resulting from improper BIOS settings. If you
are in doubt, please post a question to the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
newsgroup or refer to a competent computer technician.
Messing up with something you do not understand will
often get you in trouble (who doesn't know someone who
did?). YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. -
- We do not subscribe to the outrageous usage of graphic
images in WWW documents, notably since the infrastructure
to support the transmission of large files all over the
place is not yet there. We have used this philosophy to
design this site since we wish to provide information,
not mere distractions.
- This guide is provided as a free reference
for the Word Wide Web (Internet) community. You may use
it as long as you respect the following:
- You may distribute, print and use the text content of
it freely (the word processing files, NOT the HTML files)
as long as the contents are not altered, no
fees are asked, and references to the editors and
contributors are kept. Please respect intellectual
property.
- You MAY NOT use it for commercial purpose
(any types of printed and electronic publications).
- You MAY NOT include it (in whole or in part) in a
web page, other than an HTML version of the FULL
and UNMODIFIED text version. Instead, provide a link to
this site
(http://www.lemig.umontreal.ca/bios/bios_sg.htm).
- If in doubt, please contact us,
we are quite open as long as ethical rules are respected.
- Also, keep in mind that we are devoting our free time to
build and update such a document. Some people take
information for granted and think they are entitled to
get it.
- If you are making money out of this information, publish
part of it in a computer magazine and omitting to mention
it (this actually happened to us), posting net-wide (to
groups where it does not belong) religious babbling,
performing green card lottery scam or you simply do not
respect netiquette: may your CPU perish by
electromigration!
- The guide has a mirror site in England:
- http://www.lexology.co.uk/bios/bios_sg.htm.
- You will get a much faster access. We are also looking
for mirror sites for Asia and Australia.
If you can provide such a facility, please contact us.
- If you are browsing the Web from New Zealand, please use
this mirror site instead:
- http://www.manawatu.gen.nz/pages/bios_survival
- As you can (or will) see, this document will always be
under construction for the simple reason that BIOS
designs are continuously evolving (along with the
computer industry). If you have a SOLVED problem, please
send it to the editors so it can be added to subsequent
versions of this document. WE NEED YOUR HELP IN ORDER
TO KEEP THIS DOCUMENT UP TO DATE. Your contributions
or comments will be much appreciated. We are notably
interested in links to other useful pages as well as
Pentium/PCI BIOS settings. Of course, credits are
attributed accordingly.
-
© Jean-Paul Rodrigue and Phil Croucher
