Bios Savior Review

With the rapid rate of development of new PC hardware, motherboard manufactures seem to be releasing BIOS upgrades every few weeks just to keep pace with compatibility/performance issues.

So what exactly is a "BIOS"? The word BIOS is an acronym for Basic Input Output System. This is a piece of software burnt into a ROM chip on the motherboard, the purpose of which is to initialise the PC at switch on and control the keyboard, disk drives, com ports, screen etc. to allow the system to load the operating system. The ROM that contains the BIOS is "flashable" which means the software can be upgraded if required by the user. The problems start if a BIOS upgrade fails for some reason, (e.g. a power cut). You will probably be left with a totally useless unbootable computer. This is where the BIOS Savior comes in. This device allows you to have two BIOS and switch between them. If a BIOS upgrade fails, you can just switch back to the other BIOS and try again.

The BIOS Savior is basically a second BIOS chip with a switch, allowing you to select itself or the original BIOS chip. It relies on the fact that that the BIOS chip is only used during the boot process, during part of which it copies or "shadows" itself into system ram. The chip is then ignored and all BIOS activity is performed from ram. Once booting is complete you can switch to the other BIOS chip for upgrading.

Fitting is a breeze. Unplug the BIOS chip and replace with the BIOS Savior, connect the switch to the module and plug the BIOS chip into the BIOS Savior.

WARNING: Make sure you plug in the module and the BIOS chip the correct way round. Failure to do so will destroy both!!

The BIOS Savior comes packaged in a smart cardboard box.