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In computing, BIOS (/ ˈ b aɪ ɒ s,-oʊ s /, BY-oss, -ohss; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process (power-on startup). [1]
Version 2.0 of the Desktop Management BIOS specification was released on March 6, 1996 by American Megatrends (AMI), Award Software, Dell, Intel, Phoenix Technologies, and SystemSoft Corporation. It introduced 16-bit plug-and-play functions used to access the structures from Windows 95. [7]
Standard PC BIOS is limited to a 16-bit processor mode and 1 MB of addressable memory space, resulting from the design based on the IBM 5150 that used a 16-bit Intel 8088 processor. [8] [34] In comparison, the processor mode in a UEFI environment can be either 32-bit (IA-32, AArch32) or 64-bit (x86-64, Itanium, and AArch64).
Maximum PC gave Windows 7 a rating of 9 out of 10 and called Windows 7 a "massive leap forward" in usability and security, and praised the new Taskbar as "worth the price of admission alone." [178] PC World called Windows 7 a "worthy successor" to Windows XP and said that speed benchmarks showed Windows 7 to be slightly faster than Windows ...
BIOS interrupt calls perform hardware control or I/O functions requested by a program, return system information to the program, or do both. A key element of the purpose of BIOS calls is abstraction - the BIOS calls perform generally defined functions, and the specific details of how those functions are executed on the particular hardware of the system are encapsulated in the BIOS and hidden ...
The main editions also can take the form of one of the following special editions: N and KN editions The features in the N and KN Editions are the same as their equivalent full versions, but do not include Windows Media Player or other Windows Media-related technologies, such as Windows Media Center and Windows DVD Maker due to limitations set by the European Union and South Korea ...
The first stage of PC boot loaders (FSBL, first-stage boot loader) located on fixed disks and removable drives must fit into the first 446 bytes of the master boot record in order to leave room for the default 64-byte partition table with four partition entries and the two-byte boot signature, which the BIOS requires for a proper boot loader ...
In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. [1] A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer programs to access hardware functions without needing to ...