IBM developed the hardware, wrote the

basic input/output system (BIOS), and then hired Microsoft to develop the disk o
perating system ( DOS ).
IBM didnot secured rights ..
The BIOS is defined as the core set of control software that drives the hardware
devices in
the system directly. these types of programs are normally called device drivers,
so in essence, the BIOS
is a collection of all the core device drivers used to operate and control the s
ystem hardware. The
operating system (such as DOS or Windows) uses the drivers in the BIOS to contro
l and communicate
with the various hardware and peripherals in the system.
Phoenix Technologies is the company that gave BIOS to IBM with rights that canno
t be copied but what phoniex did is that it hired 2 groups of people to reverse
engineer the BIOS. The first group studied the BIOS from scrach and gave ti to 2
nd group and it developed a similar BISO - So Phoenix ultimately have a new BIO
S very much similat to the IBM one with all the licence .
Now the Mac system - the BIOS and OS is owned by Apple so no dupilication was po
ssible as above .
It can be concluded that the PC software is controlled by Microsoft.

And Pc hardware is conrolled by INTEL .

This can be concuded as it controls the motherbords
So the modern systems are called Wintel systems as windows controls software an
d Itel controls hardware ..
Intel and windows merged to design the docs - PC xx Design Guide.
xx - indocates the year .
Examples;
Hardware Design Guide for Microsoft Windows 95
¦ Hardware Design Guide Supplement for PC 95
¦ PC 97 Hardware Design Guide
¦ PC 98 System Design Guide
¦ PC 99 System Design Guide
¦ PC 2000 System Design Guide
¦ PC 2001 System Design Guide
These are available for download from the PC Design Guides Web site (http://www.
pcdesguide.org), as well as the Microsoft Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/whd
c/hwdev/platform/
pcdesign/desguide/pcguides.mspx).
anything that says" Designed for windows " should meet these requirments ..
Systems can be broken in to two atogories ..
can be broken by
1. Type of software that they run and
2. Motherbord host bus.
When the motherbord reads data the data moves via processor external bus which i
s connected to the processor host bus on the mother board.
If the processor has 32 bit data bus then the motherbord should be wired with 32
bit processor host bus.
Each wire in the system carries 3.3v to 5 V to give a binarry 1 .
All mordern prcessors have 64 bit .so can carry 64 bits at a time to and from t
he memor ..
68 bit = 8 bytes at a time => a 8 byte lane in and out of the chip.
486 systems reads 32 bit at time .
SIMMs - Single in line memory moduel are 32 bit
so when used for 486 - simm are incerted one at a time .when used for P4 system
or 64 bit SIMMs are incerted 2 at a time ..
DIMMs are 64 bit wide ..
ADDRESS BUS :
set of wires that carries the addressing information used to describe the memory
location to which the data is being sent or from which the data is being retrie
ved. As with the
data bus, each wire in an address bus carries a single bit of information.
The size of Adsress bus indicates the maximum amount of RAM a chip can address .
DATA bus and ADDREAA bus are indipendent .
In simple terms the size of data bus indicates the information moving capability
of the chip and the size of ADDRESS bus indicates howmuch memory the chip can h
andel .