BIOS in NVRAM?
Posted: Sun May 23, 2004 1:18 am
Hi!
After notising the fact described on the later post of mine 15 Jun 2004, I had to re-write/edit this first post for this topic as follows:
During my investigations on the AT/S7/PI mobos', I suddenly run into a case, on which I assumed, that the BIOS code was constantly loaded on and at boot-up read from some kind of NVRAM on the mobo, as the BIOS chip on a DIP32 socket on the board proved to be not in use at all, i.e. it's completely useless/idle and like "forgotten" there ... Can this be true? Yes, I first assumed, and later on did notise, that there was actually another PLCC32 BIOS chip soldered onto the mobo!
On all the some 9 other AT/S7/PI-cases, which I have been going through, the BIOS is loaded at boot-up every time from the replaceable BIOS chip, which is noted by the fact, that the boot-up will be freezing totally at the very beginning, if no BIOS chip is present on the socket, but not on this particular case.
This Fujitsu-Siemens (former ICL/Nokia) Ergo x451 AT/S7/PI/166 mobo with OPTi55xM chipset and SMC FDC3/C665GT MultiIO chip was somehow strangely different, it didn't need it's DIP32 BIOS chip at all and did boot-up well even without it. This was suprising me much and also did confuse me quite much for a while when testing and did "renew" my knowledge on the BIOS techniques on the AT/S7/PI mobos' ... Maybe this is a mobo from the times in 1996 just changing the techniques to a newer one, and the old tehnique was "forgotten" on the mobo ...
On the newer boards, those with replaceable or permanently soldered PLCC32 and TSOP32 BIOS chips, I have been notising this NVRAM type of technique in use, but have not yet been investigating it too deeply, just doing maybe some 30 update flashes, luckily all succeeding, huh-huh!,
knowing, that the flashing of these might be more dangerous and become much more expensive when failing, than the old replaceable DIP32 BIOS flashes ...
Please freely comment, if there is anything I may have not been notising on this case.
Best regards,
Pete V.
After notising the fact described on the later post of mine 15 Jun 2004, I had to re-write/edit this first post for this topic as follows:
During my investigations on the AT/S7/PI mobos', I suddenly run into a case, on which I assumed, that the BIOS code was constantly loaded on and at boot-up read from some kind of NVRAM on the mobo, as the BIOS chip on a DIP32 socket on the board proved to be not in use at all, i.e. it's completely useless/idle and like "forgotten" there ... Can this be true? Yes, I first assumed, and later on did notise, that there was actually another PLCC32 BIOS chip soldered onto the mobo!
On all the some 9 other AT/S7/PI-cases, which I have been going through, the BIOS is loaded at boot-up every time from the replaceable BIOS chip, which is noted by the fact, that the boot-up will be freezing totally at the very beginning, if no BIOS chip is present on the socket, but not on this particular case.
This Fujitsu-Siemens (former ICL/Nokia) Ergo x451 AT/S7/PI/166 mobo with OPTi55xM chipset and SMC FDC3/C665GT MultiIO chip was somehow strangely different, it didn't need it's DIP32 BIOS chip at all and did boot-up well even without it. This was suprising me much and also did confuse me quite much for a while when testing and did "renew" my knowledge on the BIOS techniques on the AT/S7/PI mobos' ... Maybe this is a mobo from the times in 1996 just changing the techniques to a newer one, and the old tehnique was "forgotten" on the mobo ...
On the newer boards, those with replaceable or permanently soldered PLCC32 and TSOP32 BIOS chips, I have been notising this NVRAM type of technique in use, but have not yet been investigating it too deeply, just doing maybe some 30 update flashes, luckily all succeeding, huh-huh!,
knowing, that the flashing of these might be more dangerous and become much more expensive when failing, than the old replaceable DIP32 BIOS flashes ...
Please freely comment, if there is anything I may have not been notising on this case.
Best regards,
Pete V.