There's an old adage for computer noviceses that says if you can smash
something with a hammer, it's hardware. But if you can only swear at it in
futility, it's software. But not
everything is that cut and dried. And one of the most important parts of your
PC is actually a closely linked fusion of hardware and software. I'm talking
about the basic input output system or
BIOS, which I certainly don't recommend hitting with a hammer, by the way, no
matter how upset you are. So, the BIOS is a very small piece of code that sits
on a readonly or a flash memory chip on your computer's motherboard. It's often
referred to as the motherboard's firmware since it links the software to
the hardware. But how? Well, think about it kind of like a person. Your brain
stem helps control very fundamental bodily functions like breathing and your
heartbeat, but it doesn't do any actual thinking. So, your computer's BIOS does
some very basic but crucial things
without which you couldn't watch Tequiki or have your Red Bull fueled CSGO
marathons, but it doesn't, you know, render graphics or anything like that.
So, when you first turn your computer on, the BIOS is the first thing to
spring into action and wake up the rest of your computer. Kind of like how your
car's ignition gets the engine going. The BIOS first check settings stored in
a SMOS chip to determine how the user wants the system to run. So, that's all
that stuff that's in the utility that you get to by mashing delete or F2 when
you first boot up. Then, what it does is it initializes your devices accordingly.
CPU, RAM, graphics card, peripherals, and so on. After this, the BIOS will run
the power on self test or post to make sure that all the gizmos inside your
case are functioning correctly. If
everything is hunky dory, you'll usually hear a single beep to let you know that
everything's good, provided that you installed the little speaker that came
with your motherboard. If you get an error, you know, like beep beep beep
beep beep. It's not Morse code. It's probably telling you you need to receat
your RAM or a video card or check for a
part that's just plain gone kaput. Once that's done, the BIOS will check for a
bootable device, meaning some kind of drive with an operating system on it,
and then it'll hand off control of your computer to the OS. Now, old school
BIOSes often provided a link between your keyboard, mouse, and other devices
and the OS. While modern operating systems like newer versions of Windows
control the hardware more directly. So once you're at the Windows desktop, your
BIOS basically goes to sleep until you need it to start things up again. Seems
pretty straightforward, right? Well, sort of actually. The way that the BIOS
was implemented for a long time had some very serious limitations. One of the
most obvious of them being drive support. The system that a conventional
BIOS uses to access your hard drive or SSD called the master boot record or MBR
could only handle partitions less than
two terabytes. And that was fine for a long time. But with many modern hard
drives holding way more data, it became
obvious that something new was needed. The unified extensible firmware
interface or UEFI, which no one can agree how to pronounce, was born. Not
only can UEFI deal with insanely large storage devices, we're talking millions
of pedabytes here, it's also quicker than a conventional BIOS to boot up and
can use an actual graphical interface complete with animations and mouse
support. Older BIOSes only featured that blue screen that looked kind of like a
crash, but it was fine, which at least I guess was better than the really old
days where there was no BIOS utility at all and you had to physically move
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