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By Trioptik
August 18, 1999

  Everyone hears the acronym, and most admittedly associate the term "BIOS" with the hideous black screen> you know, the mysterious pre-Windows part of booting your computer.  Well there is a lot more to the "black screen" part.  More than just flashing a bunch or hardware hodge podge information on the screen.  BIOS stands for "Basic Input/Output System."  The BIOS is stored in several chips on the motherboard, and is usually labeled indicating what sort of BIOS it is, i.e, Award, AMIBIOS, etc.   The BIOS is responsible for every item in your computer, and making sure that each item operates correctly.  When you hit the power button on you PC, and you hear all of those beeps and see the flashing lights, you are seeing and hearing the BIOS in action as it checks your system.  Basically the BIOS is responsible for checking each of the components in your system, checking for error states, resource usage, etc.  If an error occurs, say a failed hard disk or controller, the BIOS will report that to you.   The main system BIOS will also check for other hardware BIOSes present on your hardware devices like the video card, which usually has a BIOS of its own.  It then allows the other BIOS to inspect itself and the system resources, and then continues onto the next piece of hardware.  The BIOS does this checking routine for every item in the computer, including floppy drives, hard drives, mouse, keyboard....., you name it.   It then checks what it finds against the CMOS settings, which are user specified, or pre-programmed to some default setting.  CMOS stands for Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor, and refers to the chip type that houses the CMOS settings.   Like I said, these values stored in CMOS are then compared against what the BIOS finds during its system check, which then determines the error status, if any.  The BIOS plays a very important role in the PC obviously, but is sometimes dismissed.   Most new motherboards have a BIOS that can be "flashed" or upgraded via a small binary program.  This allows for motherboards to be upgraded with newer BIOS versions, enhancing their features often times.  This is also a very dangerous area for PC users, as there is now restore function to a BIOS if you destroy it.  You can always re-flash the original BIOS back to the system BIOS, but only if a command prompt can be reached in order to run the flash utility.  Often times when an incorrect or incompatible BIOS has been flashed to a motherboard, it is impossible to get the computer beyond the POST, resulting in what I like to call BIOStall.  Once the BIOS is incapable of performing a system check, because basically it is like a lost child in a strange place, the computer becomes as stupid as a rock.  The only cure for this is either the total replacement of the BIOS chip(s) or a new motherboard.  So as you can see, the BIOS plays a major role in getting you to a point where that box of electronic junk becomes a productive tool.  Don't overlook that poor, neglected black screen next time you boot your PC, because you should be thanking it for the hard work it does for you, after all, do you want to check every circuit in the PC every time you turn it on????

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