I read that this was so controversial that some boards lets you choose between both when buying them back in the days, or even had both built-in that you could select with a jumper. What do you think?
Hmm I never heard of that...
But I do think that Award BIOS was more popular. AMI went downhill when they introduced that "windows stype interface". From there onward is was pretty much Award.
The WinBIOS had mouse support. And I think it was actually text mode (run it with a CGA or MDA card). That would be ~4k more ROM memory required for the graphics font map. I like(d) it.
1+1=10
I also liked it. The mouse feature was pretty cool. I had this BIOS on a AMD 486DX4-100 machine.
I thought AMIBios jumped the shark when they got rid of WinBIOS and their Award-ish boot screen. It's a plain series of whatever with a logo on top 🙁
bird cursor ftw
I think it's 640x350x16 or some odd text mode. Certainly looks 640x350x16
EGA text mode - 8x14 character blocks
1+1=10
I like the windows bios also. First time I saw it (I never knew it existed!) my jaw dropped to the floor 🤣!
A DOS computer with a windows bios hehe 😀
I've found I need to browse through a new bios to look for things regardless of make and year. I don't really like Phoenix bios though, they're usually very limited.
One good thing about Phoenix bios (atleast I think it was Phoenix bios) is when you want to quit, you only need to press -enter- and not have to type in the 'y' (which is annoying when fiddling with the bios in the dark 😜 )
Btw, the windows bios is I think the quickest way to test those old mice to see if they are confirmed to work 😀
IIRC it didn't support all old mouse protocols.
1+1=10
IIRC it didn't support all old mouse protocols.
That reminds me, I used to have an old Packard Hell laptop, where the WinBIOS didn't even support the built-in mouse (some weird deal which used the J-key as a pointing stick). Not a very well thought out design, there, I say. 🤣
I didn't like it much, I only like AWARD BIOS type interface which is why I don't like ASUS,
my main problem with the WinBIOS was that on the Compaq Deskpro 4000 that I have it on, you had to have a separate partition for the BIOS so when I reformat I forget and lose the BIOS, otherwise you have to boot into the BIOS on floppy disk which is sooo annoying.
I think it's ok but there's really no real added benefit with it.
