Technical Reference Guide www.hp.com 8-1
8
SYSTEM BIOS
8.1 Introduction
The System Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) of the computer is a collection of machine
language programs stored as firmware in read-only memory (ROM). The system BIOS includes
such functions as Power-On Self Test (POST), PCI device initialization, Plug 'n Play support,
power management activities, and the Setup utility. The firmware contained in the system BIOS
ROM supports the following operating systems and specifications:
■ DOS 6.2, Windows 2000, XP, and Vista (Home and Professional versions)
■ Windows NT 4.0 (SP6 required for PnP support)
■ OS/2 ver 2.1 and OS/2 Warp
■ SCO Unix
■ DMI 2.1
■ Alert Standard Format (ASF) 2.0
■ ACPI and OnNow
■ SMBIOS 2.5
■ BIOS Boot Specification 1.01
■ Enhanced Disk Drive Specification 3.0
■ “El Torito” Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification 1.0
■ ATAPI Removeable Media Device BIOS Specification 1.0
■ Serial ATA Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) 1.2
The BIOS firmware is contained in a flash ROM component. The runtime portion of the BIOS
resides in a 128KB block from E0000h to FFFFFh.
This chapter includes the following topics:
■ ROM flashing (8.2)
■ Boot functions (8.3)
■ Client management functions (8.4)
■ SMBIOS support (8.5)
■ USB legacy support (8.6)
■ Management functions (8.7)
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