Technical Information 1-5
System BIOS
The system BIOS is from American Megatrends Incorporated (AMI), which provides ISA
and PCI compatibility. The BIOS is contained in a flash memory device on the system
board. The BIOS provides the power-on self test (POST), the system Setup program, A
PCI and IDE auto-configuration utility, and BIOS recovery code. Note that Power
Management is not supported.
The system BIOS is always shadowed. Shadowing allows any BIOS routine to be executed
from fast 32-bit onboard DRAM instead of from the slower 8-bit flash device.
NEC’s Flash ROM allows fast, economical BIOS upgrades. NEC Flash ROMs are
reprogrammable system and video EPROMs. With NEC’s Flash ROM, a ROM BIOS
change:
n
is fast and easily done using a Flash utility
n
eliminates the expensive replacement of ROM BIOS chips, and reduces system
maintenance costs
n
reduces inadvertent system board damage that can take place when replacing
ROMs
n
facilitates adopting new technology while maintaining corporate standards
n
gives network administrators company-wide control of BIOS revisions.
The BIOS programs execute the Power-On Self-Test, initialize processor controllers, and
interact with the display, diskette drives, hard disks, communication devices, and
peripherals. The system BIOS also contains the Setup utility. The hardware setup default
copies the ROM BIOS into RAM (shadowing) for maximum performance.
The Flash ROM allows the system and video BIOS to be upgraded with the BIOS Update
utility, without removing the ROM (see Section 2 for further information on the BIOS
Update utility). The Flash ROM supports the reprogramming of the system BIOS and the
video BIOS.
Summary of Contents for POWERMATE PRO150
Page 152: ...A 16 Connector Pin Assignments ...
Page 160: ...B 8 System Board Settings ...