Basic Input/Output System (BIOS)
(bī´ōs) Acronym for basic input/output system, the built-in software that determines what a computer can do without accessing programs from a disk. On personal computers (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 ROM BIOS Explained
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.
PC BIOS Standardization
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.
Read Also:
- BIOS flash utility
A utility that can be used to save, manage and update a motherboard BIOS, with some allowing you to update the BIOS in Windows a environment, if the motherboard supports this. The BIOS flash utility commonly will save your current BIOS file, download the latest version from the manufacturer using your Internet connection, update the […]
- BITNET
Short for Because It’s Time Network, BITNET is one of the oldest and largest wide-area networks, used extensively by universities. A new version of BITNET, called BITNET-II, relies on the Internet network to transfer messages and files.
- BLOB
Short for binary large object, a collection of binary data stored as a single entity in a database management systems (DBMS). BLOBs are used primarily to hold multimedia objects such as images, videos, and sound, though they can also be used to store programs or even fragments of code. Not all DBMSs support BLOBs.
- BLS
Short for Basic Link Service, and also called Link Service, it is a Fibre Channel request and response protocol used by all devices.
- BMP
The standard bit-mapped graphics format used in the Windows environment. By convention, graphics files in the BMP format end with a.BMP extension. BMP files store graphics in a format called device-independent bitmap (DIB).