AwardBIOS (also known as Award Modular BIOS and later known as Phoenix - AwardBIOS after the Phoenix Technologies merge of the company) is a Personal Computer BIOS developed by Award Software in 1984.
Phoenix acquisition
On April 16, 1998, Phoenix Technologies acquired Award Software to create a $100M BIOS firm. It was completed on September 28 of the same year and both companies merged. As a result of the merge, Award Software went bankrupt, while Phoenix survived.
List of known versions
| Version | Release date | POST screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| AwardBIOS 1.xx | 1984? | Not available | Confirmed existence by a file of a diagnostics program. No ROM files or pictures are available for it as of now. |
| AwardBIOS 2.xx | 1985 | 
|
|
| AwardBIOS 3.xx | 1987 | 
|
Siemens-Nixdorf fork exists. |
| AwardBIOS v4.00 | 1991 | Mostly used on motherboards with EISA expansion buses | |
| AwardBIOS v4.20/4.26/4.28/4.32 | 1992 | 4.26/4.28/4.32 might have been only used by Gateway 2000/Swan/Anigma. | |
| AwardBIOS v4.50 | 1993 | 
|
Not to be confused with EliteBIOS, early versions have blue POST screen while later versions have black EliteBIOS POST screen but with v4.50 version number. |
| AwardBIOS v4.50xx/v4.51xx/v4.60xx | 1994 | Codenamed "EliteBIOS". | |
| Award PowerBIOS | 1994 | Probably considered as AwardBIOS v5.00 by Award. | |
| AwardBIOS v6.00PG | 1998 | 
|
Codenamed "Medallion". ASUS and Gigabyte forks of it exist. A sub-version called WorkstationBIOS also exists. |
