BIOS Essentials
A
2-day Course
This course focuses
on the x86 PC’s traditional firmware design – Legacy BIOS and its POST (Power-On
Self Test) sequence. Using actual BIOS code sequences it shows how
built-in controllers are initialized, how PCI devices and functions are
discovered and configured, how expansion ROMs are detected, validated
and executed. The course also describes the various data
tables that are created and populated during POST.
If you design,
develop, test, or validate hardware or software platforms, ACPI, PCI, or
firmware based expansion ROM capabilities that interact with Legacy BIOS, this
course is for you!
NOTE: If you are
interested in UEFI
Platform Initialization and Architecture (Tiano), you will find our course on those
topics here.
You will benefit from this
workshop if you
-
Design or configure hardware and low-level software that depends on
data structures created during the POST
-
Need
a detailed understanding of what happens in a PC before the
operating system is loaded and given control
-
Are
migrating from BIOS to UEFI based systems
You will learn
-
The
components of Legacy BIOS
-
Fundamentals of UEFI - the new generation of PC boot firmware
-
Details of each step from power-on to operating system boot loader hand-off
-
What
typical BIOS and UEFI code looks like
-
How
legacy ISA functionality is handled (yes - it's still there!)
-
How
PCI devices are detected and configured
-
How
ACPI power management is initialized
-
The
firmware’s ongoing participation in running the PC
-
How
to troubleshoot the boot sequence
-
The
system software architecture
Prerequisites
This course is designed for technical
managers, engineers and high-level technicians who need to increase
their knowledge about the PC’s Legacy BIOS-based initialization and boot
sequence.
Attendees are expected
to have a technical background. Our
PC Architecture Overview is a good
primer for this workshop. Basic knowledge of assembly language
programming, microprocessor technology, memory, and standard peripherals
is expected.
The training approach
Workshop topics
Firmware basics
Fundamental hardware
concepts
-
Architecture of the
original PC
-
What
has been added
-
What
has been removed
-
Architecture of today’s PCs
-
The
cost of backward compatibility
-
Real and protected
mode memory maps
-
The I/O port map
-
x86 CPU registers
-
Real mode
capabilities
-
Making sense of
Segmented Memory
The POST process
-
What
happens before the POST (Power-On Self Test)?
-
Accessing the POST
code
-
Reading
configuration settings from NV-RAM
-
Chipset
initialization
-
How video is
initialized
-
How memory is tested
-
"Walking" the PCI
buses to identify and initialize installed PCI devices and functions
-
Initialization of key
legacy functions and devices
-
USB and IEEE1394 ("Firewire")
initialization
-
Memory map after
POST
-
Classic hand-off to operating system
-
ACPI system
initialization – The RSDP and RSDT
A new way to boot
-
Why change?
-
What is UEFI
and where does it fit in?
-
Major advantages
over Legacy BIOS
-
The UEFI Forum's Platform Initialization Specification - A phased approach to creating the UEFI
-
New driver models
-
The UEFI System Partition layout
-
The new boot process and
sequence
-
Legacy support
Operating system configuration
-
The
PC – A layered software architecture
-
Definition of the
layers
-
Windows, Linux, and
DOS boot sequences
-
Use of information
collected by POST
Troubleshooting the boot
sequence
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