UPGRADING REPAIRING PCs

Determining the Motherboard Manufacturer for BIOS Upgrades 81
Note
Use the following resources to determine the manufacturer of
non-AMI motherboards using the AMI BIOS:
AMI has a listing of U.S. and non-U.S. motherboard manufacturers
at the following address:
http://www.ami.com/amibios/support/identify.html
AMI also offers a downloadable utility program called AMIMBID
for use with Windows 9x/2000/NT and MS-DOS. Follow the AMI
Motherboard Identification Utility link from the AMI Technical
Support page, available as a link from the following address:
http://www.ami.com
A more detailed listing, including complete identification of particular
motherboard models, is available at Wim’s BIOS page
(www.ping.be/bios). This site also has links to motherboard
manufacturers for BIOS upgrades.
Identifying Motherboards with Award BIOS
Motherboards with the Award Software BIOS also use a numerical
code, although the structure is different from that for the AMI Hi-
Flex BIOS.
The following is a typical Award BIOS ID:
2A59IABDC-00
The sixth and seventh characters (bolded for emphasis) indicate the
motherboard manufacturer, whereas the eighth character can be
used for the model number or the motherboard family (various
motherboards using the same chipset).
Note
For lookup tables of these codes, see the following Web sites:
Award Software’s official table for manufacturers only is available
at www.phoenix.com/pcuser/bios-award-vendors.html.
An expanded list, also containing chipset information (stored in
the first five characters of the Award BIOS ID), is available at
Wim’s BIOS site (www.ping.be/bios/).