BIOS and CMOS [] raw data

BIOS screen readout

This is a sample AMI BIOS screen display, for my puter "Ginger."

Here is what it says at the bottom of the screen after the video card starts up.... 


bla bla (c) etc
40-01S5-ZZ1124-10101111-060691-OPWBSX-F
^made for a 486 CPU
 ^64 K BIOS size
   ^^^^version number
        ^^^^^^licence code
               ^halt on POST error (selected in CMOS)
                ^initialize CMOS at every boot (no)
                 ^keyboard controller pin blocking
                  ^mouse support (no)
                   ^Wait for F1 key on POST error (selected in CMOS)
                    ^display FD error during POST
                     ^display Video error during POST
                      ^display keyboard error during POST
                        ^^^^^^BIOS date
                               ^^^^^^BIOS chipset ID
                                      ^KB controller version

CMOS values

A freeware utility "cmozer" can be used to look at and snoop the CMOS.

The following is the actual content of the CMOS code for "Ginger" shown below in hexadecimal notation. As you can see, all the information is listed in 64 bytes, but coded. Very compact. 


  CMOS hex dump (original)

   00: 11 BE 02 FF 15 EA 04 04 02 99 26 02 50 80 00 00
   10: 42 3B FF 28 4F 80 02 00 4C 2F 2F 21 04 10 00 00
   20: 08 00 00 3F DD 03 0F 00 00 08 00 00 38 6F 05 39
   30: 00 4C 19 87 00 0F 00 21 90 98 79 00 20 20 05 00

Identifying some entrees... 



First 16 bytes...
   00: 11 BE 02 FF 15 EA 04 04 02 99 26 02 50 80 00 00
                         ^^day of the week (It is thursday)
                            ^^ the fourth (date)
                               ^^ of February
                                  ^^ year "99"
                                                 ^^diagnostics (all OK)
       ^ ^ ^ etc are the current time


Second 16 bytes...
   10: 42 3B FF 28 4F 80 02 00 4C 2F 2F 21 04 10 00 00
       ^^ diskette types: Type 4 (1.44-3.5 inch)
                          Type 2 (1.2M-5.25 inch)
             ^^hard drive types (type 47, both, so DOS will look it up)
                      ^^minimum base memory (reads 512K)
                                  ^^extended memory (19456K)

Third 16 bytes...
   20: 08 00 00 3F DD 03 0F 00 00 08 00 00 38 6F 05 39

Fourth 16 bytes...
   30: 00 4C 19 87 00 0F 00 21 90 98 79 00 20 20 05 00
             ^^the century.. "19"

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