The BIOS is a complex piece of Firmware (”software on a chip”) that provides support for the following devices and features of your system:
BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System
* Selection and configuration of storage devices connected to the motherboard’s host adapters, such as hard drives, floppy drives, and CD-ROM drives.
* Configuration of main and cache memory.
* Configuration of built-in ports, such as ATA/IDE and Serial ATA hard disk, floppy disk, serial, parallel, PS/2 mouse, USB, and IEEE-1394 ports.
* Configuration of integrated (built into the motherboard chipset) audio, network, and graphics features when present.
* Selection and configuration of special motherboard features, such as memory error correction, antivirus protection, and fast memory access.
* Support for different CPU types, speeds, and special features.
* Support for advanced operating systems, including networks and plug-and-play versions of Windows.
* Power management.
* Hardware monitoring (processor temperature, voltage levels, and fan performance).
Without the BIOS, your computer would simply be a collection of metal and plastic parts that couldn’t interact with one another or do much of anything but gather dust.
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