VS440FX Motherboard Technical Product Specification
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3.3 BIOS Upgrades
Flash memory simplifies distributing BIOS upgrades. You can install a new version of the BIOS
from a diskette. BIOS upgrades are available to be downloaded from the secure section on the
Intel bulletin board or from Intel’s FTP or World Wide Web sites (refer to Section 5.2).
The disk-based Flash upgrade utility, FMUP.EXE, has three options for BIOS upgrades:
• Update the Flash BIOS from a file on a disk
• Copy the current BIOS code from the Flash EEPROM to a disk file as a backup, in the event
that an upgrade cannot be successfully completed
• Compare the BIOS in the Flash device with a file to make sure the system has the correct
version
The upgrade utility ensures that the upgrade BIOS extension matches the target system to prevent
accidentally installing a BIOS for a different type of system.
3.4 PCI IDE Support
If you select “Autoconfiguration” in Setup, the BIOS automatically sets up the two local bus IDE
connectors with independent I/O channel support. The IDE interface supports PIO Mode 3 and
Mode 4 hard drives and recognizes any ATAPI devices, including CD-ROM drives and tape
drives. The BIOS determines the capabilities of each drive and configures them to optimize
capacity and performance. To take advantage of the high capacities typically available today, hard
drives are automatically configured for LBA and to PIO Mode 3 or 4, depending on the capability
of the drive. You can override the auto-configuration options by specifying manual configuration
in Setup. The ATAPI Specification recommends that ATAPI devices be configured as shown in
Table 14.
Table 14. Recommendations for Configuring an ATAPI Device
Primary Cable Secondary Cable
Drive 0 Drive 1
Drive 1
Normal, no ATAPI ATA
Disk and CD-ROM for enhanced IDE systems ATA
Legacy IDE system with only one cable ATA ATAPI
Enhanced IDE with CD-ROM and a tape or two
CD-ROMs
ATA
ATAPI
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