In these threads we have covered Safety, Surge Protection, Cooling, Cases, CPUs and Mobos, and now we start BIOS.

But first please remember that we seem to cover the subjects on three levels - beginner, intermediate, and expert. We focus on the beginner and our various contributors expand where they think best as individuals all the way to the expert level. This is good. This method can help more people in this manner.

This means if you are just starting out you might not understand a deep technical discussion but somewhere down the line you will should you decide computers are your cup of tea. You are encouraged to ask questions on whatever you do not understand.

Additionally, you will find we talk about what and how we do things in these threads. This is important as only in a medium such as this will you the reader gain both book and experience knowledge at the same time.

This is a great group of contributors although there may have been some questions about their humor at one time or another. (We like to have a little fun while we're doing this as you will see.)

These threads are for you so do join in. We'd like to meet you.

Ok, now that we have made a wonderful opening to this thread maybe I should state that the subject is BIOS (before I forget)and to make double sure I got it right, the following came from the Webopedia.

Pronounced "bye-ose," an acronym for basic input/output system. The BIOS is built-in software that determines what a computer can do without accessing programs from a disk. On PCs, the BIOS contains all the code required to control the keyboard, display screen, disk drives, serial communications, and a number of miscellaneous functions.

The BIOS is typically placed in a ROM chip that comes with the computer (it is often called a ROM BIOS). This ensures that the BIOS will always be available and will not be damaged by disk failures. It also makes it possible for a computer to boot itself. Because RAM is faster than ROM, though, many computer manufacturers design systems so that the BIOS is copied from ROM to RAM each time the computer is booted. This is known as shadowing.

Many modern PCs have a flash BIOS, which means that the BIOS has been recorded on a flash memory chip, which can be updated if necessary.

The PC BIOS is fairly standardized, so all PCs are similar at this level (although there are different BIOS versions). Additional DOS functions are usually added through software modules. This means you can upgrade to a newer version of DOS without changing the BIOS.

PC BIOSes that can handle Plug-and-Play (PnP) devices are known as PnP BIOSes, or PnP-aware BIOSes. These BIOSes are always implemented with flash memory rather than ROM.

So, now, the first question. Why is BIOS important?




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