PC Hacks 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

< Day Day Up >

Introduction: Hacks #11-18

This chapter covers the things the BIOS was meant to do—detect and configure devices that interact with the core PC, basic input and output (I/O) devices, and connections to the outside world. You will also see emphasis on when it makes sense to switch from older I/O devices to new.

You're on a mission to ensure that PCs are properly configured, and you need to be armed with the knowledge and tools to carry out that mission. If you fail, you may lose any chance of improving the performance and capabilities of your PC and all further hacks may be a waste of time.

I/O devices are either contained within the system board or are optional devices plugged into slots or external interfaces connected to the system board. Their misconfiguration can interfere with more essential functions, such as those of the disk drive, display, keyboard, and mouse.

Unless you're tinkering with a really old XT- or AT-style system board (see Figure 2-1), your PC is probably built around an all-in-one ATX-style system board with an Intel Celeron; Pentium I, II, III, or 4; or AMD Athlon or Duron CPU. It probably provides the basic I/O ports: PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, USB ports, at least one serial/COM port , and a parallel/LPT port. If it's a legacy-free system, it may only have USB and perhaps FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports. Various system boards include built-in sound, video, or Ethernet adapters too—lacking only a disk drive, monitor, keyboard, and mouse to be a complete PC.

Figure 2-1. An older no-frills mini AT-style system board with non-PS/2 keyboard connection and lacking any built-in I/O

With an older AT-style system, the I/O ports for your peripherals—COM, LPT, video, sound, and network—may be provided by various plug-in cards, using either 8- or 16-bit slots or perhaps even a PCI slot.

Figure 2-2. This newer ATX-style system board includes all of the basic I/O you'll need: PS/2 ports, USB, COM, LPT, game port, and sound

For newer systems, such as the ATX-style system board shown in Figure 2-2, I've foraged through the BIOS setup programs to dig up a series of hacks that, while not necessarily improving performance, can help you prevent conflicts between devices now and as you add more features into your system.

The setup features in most BIOS versions, even the OEM/name-brand PC systems, allow you to tweak the basic I/O port settings so you can enable, disable, and reconfigure ports to create a known, stable setup and work around some mistakes Plug and Play can make as you add more features into the system.

< Day Day Up >