UPGRADING REPAIRING PCs

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floppy drive LED. When the system beeps and the floppy
drive LED is lit, the system is copying the BIOS recovery code
into the flash device.
3. As soon as the drive LED goes off, the recovery should be
complete. Power the system off.
4. Change the flash recovery jumper back to the default position
for normal operation.
When you power the system back on, the new BIOS should be
installed and functional. However, you might want to leave the
BIOS upgrade floppy in drive A: and check to see that the proper
BIOS version was installed.
Note
Chapter 3—BIOS Configurations and Upgrades
Note that this BIOS recovery procedure is often the fastest way
to update a large number of machines, especially if you are performing
other upgrades at the same time. This is how it is normally
done in a system assembly or production environment.
Plug-and-Play BIOS
The role of the traditional BIOS was to manage the essential devices
in the system: the hard drive, floppy drive, video, parallel and serial
ports, and keyboard and system timer. Other devices were left to
fight for the remaining IRQs and other hardware resources listed in
Chapter 2, “System Components and Configuration.” When
Windows 95 was introduced, the role of the BIOS changed dramatically.
To support Windows 95, the Plug-and-Play BIOS was introduced,
changing how cards were installed and managed. Table 3.2
compares a Plug-and-Play (PnP) BIOS to a conventional BIOS.
Table 3.2 Plug-and-Play BIOS Versus Conventional BIOS
Task Conventional BIOS Plug-and Play BIOS
Hardware Motherboard-based All PnP devices as well as
configuration devices and video only motherboard devices
Configuration type Static (fixed settings) Dynamic (settings can be altered
as various devices are installed)
Configuration Manual configuration Manual, BIOS-assisted, or
operating method system
assisted
Operating system Accepts all BIOS settings Receives PnP device information
relationship to BIOS without alteration from BIOS and can alter settings
as required