bios setting training

BIOS means Basic Input Output System. It is the first thing that operates when the computer is turned on, and is separate from the OS, though it interacts with the OS. The term BIOS is generally used interchangeably with the terms CMOS and Setup, though the three terms mean three generally distinct things. This training discusses the basics of the BIOS, BIOS settings you should be concerned with, and how to update a BIOS.

The System BIOS
Basic functions | POST (Power On Self Test) | The Peripheral BIOS | CMOS | Setup | The battery


Important BIOS settings
Standard settings | Advanced features | Advanced chipset features | PCI/PnP Configuration | Power Management | Integrated peripherals | IDE device setup/autoconfiguration | Security/password | Hardware device settings | Autoconfiguration and Defaults


Identifying and flashing the BIOS
Unicore BIOS Wizard | Flash BIOS Procedures


Vendor Resources

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1. The System BIOS

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Basic functions

The BIOS performs the following boot functions in a typical computer system:

- Takes inventory of all hardware in the system and checks to ensure each components' basic operability.
- Recognizes and configures new hardware such as hard drives and floppy drives.
- Locates a valid OS and transfers the control of the system to that OS after boot functions have completed.

The BIOS also performs the following tasks during the normal operation of the system:

- Interacts with the OS to configure hardware behavior.
- Enables and disables integrated devices.
- Interacts with the 'hardware abstraction' layer to ensure compatibility between newer hardware and older applications.
- Affects system power properties.
- Provides a level of system security.

Post (Power On Self Test)

- When the computer first turns on, a POST is performed to ensure that all critical devices are operating.
- Devices checked include memory, drives, cpu, system timer, chipset, all peripheral cards, and memory.
- When all devices are deemed operable, the BIOS passes system control over to the OS.
- If a device is malfunctioning, and error code is generated in the form of beep codes and/or text.
- During POST, the system BIOS reads peripheral BIOS routines and runs them (see below).

The Peripheral BIOS

- Each installed device has its own 'BIOS'. This 'peripheral BIOS' interacts with the system BIOS.
- It is the peripheral BIOS which identifies the device to the system BIOS and the OS.
- This is how the OS determines if it has a driver for the device when the device is first installed.

Example: When the computer is turned on, the system BIOS looks first to the video BIOS. The video BIOS identifies itself and initiates the video capabilities. This is why you often see the identifying video adapter information before you see system information on power-up.

CMOS

- Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
- The physical semiconductor used to carry the subroutines that run the BIOS

Setup

- The actual parameters and system settings that can be configured.
- Accessed on startup. Method of access depends on vendor.

Examples: Dell: press the f2 or 'delete' key ; Compaq: press f10

The Battery

The BIOS is powered by a battery that retains the data when the system is off.
Modern BIOS batteries are standard NiCad batteries



2. Important BIOS Settings

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Note: This does not hold for proprietary BIOS setups that you may encounter in some older Compaq systems. In addition, not all BIOSes have all of these features.

Standard settings | Advanced features | Advanced chipset features | PCI/PnP Configuration | Power Management | Integrated peripherals | IDE device setup/autoconfiguration | Security/password | Hardware device settings | Autoconfiguration and Defaults

Standard Settings

These are basic settings that involve system time/date, and the detection of system drives. In addition, it configures system behaviors during certain errors. See PCguide details of standard/drive settings.

Advanced Features

Advanced drive settings and performance tweaks. Some of these settings can be disabled in the event of system failures. Frequently includes boot order settings. See PCguide details of advanced feature settings.

Advanced Chipset Features

Tweaks which will affect critical system performance involving memory, system timer, cache, etc. You will not affect these settings under any circumstances. See PCguide details of advanced chipset feature settings.

PCI/PNP Configuration

Tweaks which will affect the PCI bus (over which PCI devices run) and PnP (Plug and Play) behavior. You will not affect these settings under any circumstances. See PCguide details of PCI/PnP configuration settings.

Power Management

Affects the power down/power up of different components in the system. Includes things like 'wake up on lan'. Can affect app functions that rely on constant component uptime. See PCguide details of power management settings.

Integrated Peripherals

Enables or disables peripherals integrated into the motherboard. Choices usually include network cadapter, video adapter and audio adapter ( if they are integrated). This will be very important for you if you need to replace an integrated peripheral's function with a non-integrated card. See PCguide details of integrated peripherals settings.

IDE Device Setup/Autodetection

Drives are generally autodetected in the 'standard settings' part of the BIOS. This section allows advanced and detailed configuration of each drive. See PCguide details of hardware device settings.

Security/Password Settings

Sets passwords for system access. Note: All BIOS passwords can be circumvented by removing the BIOS battery and then re-inserting it, or setting the BIOS jumper to defaults. See PCguide details of security/password settings.

Hardware Device Settings

All new computers feature 'jumperless' configurations. You can set CPU speed, multipliers, and other parameters through the BIOS. This is where you set such parameters. See PCguide details of hardware device settings.

Autoconfiguration and Defaults

Sets all BIOS settings to the 'out of the box' configurations. Warning: setting the BIOS to defaults can cause some devices and apps to malfunction. Never set the BIOS to defaults unless explicitly instructed to. See PCguide details of hardware device settings.


3. Identifying and Flashing the BIOS

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Flashing the BIOS: replacing the software subroutines in the current BIOS with an updated image that holds new instructions. Usually used to fix system bugs not having to do with the OS, or to expand system capabilities. DO NOT FALSH THE BIOS UNLESS EXPLICITLY INSTRUCED TO DO SO.

Identify the BIOS - Download the Unicore BIOS Wizard

Identifying the BIOS can be easy or very difficult. This training includes a utility called 'Unicore BIOS wizard' that will identify any BIOS.It is small enough (450k) to load onto a floppy, take to any computer, and run it. Download it here.


Flash BIOS Procedures

- If the BIOS belongs to a major vendor system, simply find the BIOS on that vendor's download site.
- If the BIOS belongs to a mom n' pop system, and you can identify the motherboard, you can get the update from that motherboard's site.
- If the BIOS belongs to a mom n' pop system, and you cannot identify the motherboard, you would do well to use Unicore.

BIOS flash procedures vary from vendor to vendor. Generally, the process involves:

- Downloading the 'image' that will replace the current BIOS.
- Extracting the image to a floppy disk.
- Booting the system with that floppy. The update is usually automatic, or provides instructions

technology creating problem on human daily life

Spamhaus has been under attack since adding a Dutch hosting organisation called Cyberbunker to its list of unwelcome internet sites. Photograph: Piotr Pawinski/Alamy

Hundreds of thousands of Britons are unsuspecting participants in one of the internet's biggest cyber-attacks ever – because their broadband router has been subverted.
Spamhaus, which operates a filtering service used to weed out spam emails, has been under attack since 18 March after adding a Dutch hosting organisation called Cyberbunker to its list of unwelcome internet sites. The service has "made plenty of enemies", said one expert, and the cyber-attack appeared to be retaliation.
A collateral effect of the attack is that internet users accustomed to high-speed connections may have seen those slow down, said James Blessing, a member of the UK Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) council.
"It varies depending on where you are and what site you're trying to get to," he said. "Those who are used to it being really quick will notice." Some people accessing the online streaming site Netflix reported a slowdown.
Spamhaus offers a checking service for companies and organisations, listing internet addresses it thinks generate spam, or which host content linked to spam, such as sites selling pills touted in junk email. Use of the service is optional, but thousands of organisations use it millions of times a day in deciding whether to accept incoming email from the internet.
Cyberbunker offers hosting for any sort of content as long, it says, as it is not child pornography or linked to terrorism. But in mid-March Spamhaus added its internet addresses to its blacklist.
In retaliation, the hosting company and a number of eastern European gangs apparently enlisted hackers who have in turn put together huge "botnets" of computers, and also exploited home and business broadband routers, to try to knock out the Spamhaus system.
"Spamhaus has made plenty of enemies over the years. Spammers aren't always the most lovable of individuals, and Spamhaus has been threatened, sued and [attacked] regularly," noted Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, a hosting company that helped the London business survive the attack by diverting the traffic.
Rather than aiming floods of traffic directly at Spamhaus's servers – a familiar tactic that is easily averted – the hackers exploited the internet's domain name system (DNS) servers, which accept a human-readable address for a website (such as guardian.co.uk) and spit back a machine-readable one (77.91.248.30). The hackers "spoofed" requests for lookups to the DNS servers so they seemed to come from Spamhaus; the servers responded with huge floods of responses, all aimed back at Spamhaus.
Some of those requests will have been coming from UK users without their knowledge, said Blessing. "If somebody has a badly configured broadband modem or router, anybody in the outside world can use it to redirect traffic and attack the target – in this case, Spamhaus."
Many routers in the UK provided by ISPs have settings enabled which let them be controlled remotely for servicing. That, together with so-called "open DNS" systems online which are known to be insecure helped the hackers to create a flood of traffic.
"British modems are certainly being used for this," said Blessing, who said that the London Internet Exchange — which routes traffic in and out of the UK — had been helping to block nuisance traffic aimed at Spamhaus.
The use of the DNS attacks has experts worried. "The No 1 rule of the internet is that it has to work," Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who pointed out the inherent vulnerabilities of the DNS years ago, told AP.
"You can't stop a DNS flood by shutting down those [DNS] servers because those machines have to be open and public by default. The only way to deal with this problem is to find the people doing it and arrest them"

History of computing hardware

Computing hardware evolved from machines that needed separate manual action to perform each arithmetic operation, to punched card machines, and then to stored-program computers. The history of stored-program computers relates first to computer architecture, that is, the organization of the units to perform input and output, to store data and to operate as an integrated mechanism.
Before the development of the general-purpose computer, most calculations were done by humans. Mechanical tools to help humans with digital calculations were then called "calculating machines", by proprietary names, or even as they are now, calculators. It was those humans who used the machines who were then called computers. Aside from written numerals, the first aids to computation were purely mechanical devices which required the operator to set up the initial values of an elementary arithmetic operation, then manipulate the device to obtain the result. A sophisticated (and comparatively recent) example is the slide rule in which numbers are represented as lengths on a logarithmic scale and computation is performed by setting a cursor and aligning sliding scales, thus adding those lengths. Numbers could be represented in a continuous "analog" form, for instance a voltage or some other physical property was set to be proportional to the number. Analog computers, like those designed and built by Vannevar Bush before World War II were of this type. Numbers could be represented in the form of digits, automatically manipulated by a mechanical mechanism. Although this last approach required more complex mechanisms in many cases, it made for greater precision of results.
In the United States, the development of the computer was underpinned by massive government investment in the technology for military applications during WWII and then the Cold War. The latter superpower confrontation made it possible for local manufacturers to transform their machines into commercially viable products.^[1] It was the same story in Europe, where adoption of computers began largely through proactive steps taken by national governments to stimulate development and deployment of the technology.^[2]
The invention of electronic amplifiers made calculating machines much faster than their mechanical or electromechanical predecessors. Vacuum tube (thermionic valve) amplifiers gave way to solid state transistors, and then rapidly to integrated circuits which continue to improve, placing millions of electrical switches (typically transistors) on a single elaborately manufactured piece of semi-conductor the size of a fingernail. By defeating the tyranny of numbers, integrated circuits made high-speed and low-cost digital computers a widespread commodity. There is an ongoing effort to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and capable of storing more data.
Computing hardware has become a platform for uses other than mere computation, such as process automation, electronic communications, equipment control, entertainment, education, etc. Each field in turn has imposed its own requirements on the hardware, which has evolved in response to those requirements, such as the role of the touch screen to create a more intuitive and natural user interface.
As all computers rely on digital storage, and tend to be limited by the size and speed of memory, the history of computer data storage is tied to the development of computers.

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