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Expansion slots

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 11:53 pm
by sid_007
Hi,

I had a few questions related to the expansion slots found on PCs. Can the BIOS support any expansion slot made by any manufacturer, or is it that the BIOS will support only cards from specific vendors ? Similarly, can a BIOS upgrade provide the capability to support additional expansion cards ?

Once an expansion card is in place, during booting, when the BIOS executes the ROM on these expansion cards, will the BIOS know before hand the expansion cards that are there on the sytem, i.e. the manufacturers of the cards on the system ?

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 9:52 am
by cp
Can the BIOS support any expansion slot made by any manufacturer
Yes, as long as the BIOS and the expansion cards stick to the same specification (e.g. PCI 2.2).
or is it that the BIOS will support only cards from specific vendors ?
No, there is a fixed detection algorithm that is able to auto-detect all cards (at least for PCI and later, ignoring ISA autodetect here).
will the BIOS know before hand the expansion cards that are there on the sytem, i.e. the manufacturers of the cards on the system
No, the BIOS just executes the ROM code that the card provides. As long as the ROM code doesn't check for anything motherboard specific (maybe a serial number) it initializes the hardware on the card.

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 12:11 am
by sid_007
Thanks for answering those questions, appreciate it