Q:Why do network cards and other e.g. graphic cards have...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Majki Majk
  • Start date Start date
M

Majki Majk

....open slots for chips ? I suppose for Bios chips ?
Anyway i had put an award bios chip(from newer motherboard) into that
slot-empty space and it's working. What that place usually is for ?

The bios is reading, but it shows only general info and blocks, i.e. it
doesn't go further into windows boot, it blocks right there at that
award bios.

I saw at graphic cards, of course older ones, they have similar
slots...what's that for ?

Thanks.
mm

p.s. testing stuff...so this little thingy slots always seem empty, like
parts are missing...?
 
...open slots for chips ? I suppose for Bios chips ?
Click to expand...

Network cards (mainly the older ones) can accomodate a boot prom.
During BOOT this firmware can take over and allow loading the OS
from the network.

Those chips should carry a 'signature' that enables your system's
BIOS to recognize it as valid firmware.
A BIOS extension signature should be at the start of a 4 KB (?)
page boundry and consists of the byte sequence: 55h, AAh,
followed by the size of the extension (number of 512 byte
blocks). If the signature validates, the code (at the offset of
3) will get executed after POST.
Anyway i had put an award bios chip(from newer motherboard) into that
slot-empty space and it's working. What that place usually is for ?
Click to expand...

See above. Sometimes such a socket can serve to re-flash a
corrupted bios prom :-)
I saw at graphic cards, of course older ones, they have similar
slots...what's that for ?
Click to expand...

On graphic cards you sometimes see some empty sockets. Intended
to add RAM. (As this is expensive sometimes, some boards ar not
shipped with the full amount of RAM they can handle.)
 
Yes video cards sometimes have empty sockets for memory
upgrades, but I can't recall anything made in the last
decade that did, not even anything AGP opposed to PCI. I
take that back, if you mean a memory card socket instead of
a DIP socket, Matrox AGP cards did take cards for memory
upgrades.
Click to expand...

You are so right :-)

It is just that whenever I open my PC, I see a graphic card with
some empty ram sockets :-) But hey, it still works.
 
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