* William Case <billlinux [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com> [071025 12:26]: > Suppose I have just assembled the hardware for a new machine and am > going to fire it up for the first time, do I need a special program for > BIOS to find the hardware it needs to find? For example, the clock, IDE > and SCSI harddrives, floppies, keyboard etc. Are the locations stored > in BIOS ROM or does BIOS get new addresses etc. every time my machine > starts up? For the most part the BIOS probes for new devices each time. There are a few things you can configure in the BIOS that are save in a battery backed CMOS -- these tend to be "how" and "if" to do things, not "what" is in the machine. The BIOS will first probe to see what the machine is, configure memory, and then start probing peripherals. It's usually limited to probing for things that are required to boot on the PCI and USB buses, as well as some legacy devices. I think it's limited to finding hard disks, floppies, CDROMs, network controllers, keyboards, mice, and video. -- WebSig: http://www.jukie.net/~bart/sig/