In other words, when did motherboards start using flash ROM chips to hold both the system BIOS and the CMOS settings?
What were some of the first motherboards that used re-writable flash ROM chips, while ditching the CMOS chip entirely, or relegating the CMOS chip to just keep time?
CMOS was never replaced by flash, only the mask ROM was.
The real time clock and CMOS RAM have been integrated into the south bridge. For Intel it happened with PIIX4.
Oldest motherboards I have seen with flashable roms are 486s. One or two with VLB.
wrote:CMOS was never replaced by flash, only the mask ROM was.
What do you mean by mask ROM?
Mask ROM is permanently written when fabricated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask_ROM
In this case, flash EEPROMs replaced read only mask ROMs or UV erasable EPROMS.
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
I think he meant that some computers will hold setting, even when battery is dead long ago, only time will reset.
I have at least one Pentium 3 motherboard like that.
I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.
PS. If I upload RAR, it is a 16-bit DOS RAR Version 2.50.
