BIOS / CMOS ?

walid97

from technotes:

"BIOS is stored in ROM chips on the mainboard. Some chips contain programs to support basic hardware such as parallel and serial ports, keyboard and the speaker. Another ROM chip, called the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) chip stores information that is subject to change such as time/date, power saving settings, and video adapter, hard drives and other device settings."


so, there are more than one ROM chip ??
BIOS contains the programs to support hardware and CMOS contains the info that are subject to chane?

arent they the same chip ??

thanks..

lazyart

The BIOS ROM holds the code to communicate with the devices and start the machine up.

CMOS holds the settings that you find when you enter your computer's setup (usually reached by hitting DEL or F1 when powering up). Stuff like the date/time, hard drive parameters.

They are different.

walid97

ohh I thought they are stored on the same chip.. the ROM which is the also CMOS..

lazyart

Well, if you remove the battery the CMOS is erased, but the BIOS remains intact... that's who you know they are seperate items.