The Award Web Center Award Starts Over 50 Million Computers Every Day. BIOS Technical Notes Versions 2.xx To Current Contents Frequently Asked Questions Hard Drive Setup BIOS Versions 4.50, 4.50G and 4.50PG, 4.51PG Version 3.11 through 4.22 Version 3.xx Notes Version 2.xx Notes Windows 95 Troubleshooting USB FAQs Obtaining a BIOS Update Frequently Asked Questions Does my BIOS support EIDE controller cards? Yes, all of the revisions fully support EIDE cards. These cards typically provide their own supplement to the BIOS. Why does my system only have support for two drives and my friend has support for four drives? The IDE specification only defines a single channel hard drive controller supporting only two hard disk drives and two floppy disk drives. On the other hand, the newer EIDE specification supports two channels, each supporting two hard drives. If you have an older BIOS, then you will need to purchase an EIDE controller card capable of supplementing the BIOS. Will my system support four floppy drives? The BIOS does not directly support four floppies. On the other hand, you can purchase an add-on card that will give you this support. For such a card to work, though, it must provide its own supplement to the BIOS. Will my BIOS support a given video card? The BIOS provides full support for standard EGA, CGA, VGA and monochrome. Cards providing more advanced, high-resolution modes will require special drivers. If such a card does not support either EGA, CGA, VGA or monochrome, another card will need to be in the system which does support one or all of these standard modes. Remember, there is no common agreement among the video card manufactures about what modes are standard for resolutions beyond VGA. Where is my EISA Configuration Utility? If you need an EISA configuration utility or system configuration files, first check your hard drive. Look for files with names similar to ASU0001.CFG or FCT0001.CFG. If you can't find the utility on your hard drive, go back to your system vendor or mother board manufacturer. To determine the manufacaturer, check the following: 1.users manual 2.stamp on board 3.ID information on screen Hard Drive Setup Hard Disks Greater Than 528 MB These are the steps to follow when installing a hard drive greater than 1024 cylinders/528 MB: 1.Set the drive jumpers. IDE and most other drive types have switches or jumpers that determine the drive priorities. Consult the information that comes with the drive for information about the setting the jumpers. Manuals may refer to drives as C and D, or or master and slave, or 0 and 1. You can probably leave any other jumpers on the drive at the factory default settings. 2.Install the drive in the computer. Study your system and hard drive information to determine the correct drive cabling and installation in the system chassis. Incorrect cabling can ruin the drive. One edge of the drive control cable is marked with a red line or pattern. Always match the marked edge of the drive cable with pin 1 on the drive connector and pin 1 on the board connector. Plug cables into the drive and install the drive in the system, following the directions in your system guide. 3.Verify LBA support. Award BIOS software dated 01 JULY 1994 and later supports LBA (logical block addressing) mode in drives greater than 1024 cylinders/528 MB. The BIOS supports drives with up to 8.4 GB capacity. To determine the BIOS date, watch the bottom of your screen while the system boots. The date should appear briefly. You can press the PAUSE key to stop the screen scrolling while you look at the date (press any key to resume scrolling). If your BIOS is dated before JULY 01 1994, you may need to use an option ROM on a EIDE controller card (available from many vendors), or consider the possibility of an update to the BIOS, for proper support of a large IDE drive. (NOTE: You may be UNABLE to update the BIOS if the board has been discontinued!) 4.Run drive detection. Select IDE HDD AUTO DETECTION in the BIOS Setup main page. The format screen looks like this: ********************************************************************* OPTIONS SIZE CYLS HEAD PRECOMP LANDZ SECTOR MODE 2 (Y) **** **** **** ****** *** *** LBA 1 **** **** **** ****** *** *** NORMAL 3 **** **** **** ****** *** *** LARGE ********************************************************************* When prompted, press 2 on the keyboard to select LBA mode. Don't select Large mode. 5.Check for disk manager software. Check the information that comes with your drive to see if the drive has disk manager software on the boot sector. If it does, remove the disk manager software. It has been the experience of Award that many disk manager programs conflict with LBA mode. If your drive manufacturer has not included any instructions telling how to remove the disk manager software, you can remove it when you run FDISK (step 6) by adding the switch /mbr. 6.Format the drive. After running Setup to include the drive, prepare the drive for an operating system and other software by running the operating system formatting software. If you are installing DOS (with or without some version of Windows), run FDISK and FORMAT. NOTE: MS DOS, Windows 95, and OS/2 are limited to 2.1 GB in the primary (C:) drive partition, because they use a 16-bit FAT. You need to create an second (D:) partition in FDISK to utilize the full capacity of the drive. Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT do not have this partition size limitation, because they use a 32-bit FAT. Hard Disks Less Than 528 MB Follow steps 1, 2, 4, and 6, above. When asked to select a mode, select Normal. Drive Modes Normal Mode Normal mode shows the actual number of cylinders, heads and sectors for the drives, but due to the 1024-cylinder limitation, the operating system only sees 528 MB of the drive size. LBA Mode LBA is a translating mode. You may be alarmed to see the cylinders divided by two or four and the heads multiplied by two or four, depending on the size of the drive. If the drive is 850 MB, the cylinders are divided by two and the heads are multiplied by two. For drives larger than l.0 GB, the cylinders are divided by four and the heads, multiplied by four. LBA remaps the cylinders and heads in a way that bypasses the BIOS sector limit -- that's 63 sectors per track, 1024 tracks and 255 heads. LBA "fixes" the 1024-cylinder constraint of the BIOS. LBA mode keeps the number of cylinders below 1024. So, for example, if the drive has 2484 cylinders and 16 heads, LBA makes it appear to the BIOS that the drive has only 621 cylinders and 64 heads. LARGE Mode Large mode is not used very often. It works for some systems, but not for most. It was a first attempt at LBA. We suggest not using it at all. 4.50, 4.50G, 4.50PG, 4.51PG This section describes features implemented in the Award EliteBIOS? version 4.50 and 4.51. Hard Drive Settings See Hard Drive Setup Lost Password In the event you have forgotten your BIOS password or someone else has set the password on your system, contact Award Technical Support. Beep Codes The BIOS has only one standard beep code ? one short, two long ? indicating a video problem has occurred. If you are reciving any other beeps, it's probably a RAM problem. Error Codes See BIOS POST Codes and BIOS Error Messages. Version 3.11 to 4.22 Notes See Version 4.50/4.51, above. Windows/DOS Compatibility The newer versions of DOS and Windows by Microsoft are not backward compatible with some older BIOS versions released prior the development of newer specifications such as for Extended or Expanded memory. Version 3.xx Notes: Versions of the BIOS prior to 3.01 do not have support for user-defined hard drives (often referred to as type 46 or 47 hard drives). To install an unsupported drive type requires some form of BIOS update or supplement. You can supplement the BIOS by using a controller card with its own disk drive BIOS. Most current EIDE controller cards provide their own replacement disk drive BIOS. Similiarly, you can use some form of disk management software. This is usually very operating system specific, meaning that the software must be designed to operate with whatever operating system you are using. A DOS 16-bit, real mode driver may be incompatible with UNIX, or OS/2 or Windows 95. Be very careful trying to use disk management software. Version 2.xx Notes BIOS version 2.xx did not have a setup built-in. We do have a separate utility, EDCMOS, which you can download from our BBS. USB FAQs 1. Does the Award USB BIOS support USB keyboards? Yes, the Award BIOS supports USB keyboards that are 100 percent compliant with the HID (Human Input Devices) specification, version 1.0. This class of HID-compliant USB keyboards includes Alps, Cherry, Fujitsu, Acer, Silitec, Intel, and NMB. Tell us the company name and model number of any USB keyboard you find that does not work well with the Award BIOS. We will contact the company about correcting the problem. 2. Can I change the working speed of a USB keyboard in the BIOS? No, you can not. There are two USB device speeds: full speed (12 Mbit /sec) and low speed (...
pi-vo