AMIBIOS 5

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Revision as of 13:51, 16 December 2022 by Rueni97 (talk | contribs)
POST screen of AMIBIOS 5

AMIBIOS 5 is a version of AMIBIOS made by American Megatrends and known with the subcore date 101094 (October 10, 1994). It was quickly replaced by AMIBIOS 6 in less than a year. AMIBIOS 5 has no visual changes or new features compared to the newest known AMIBIOS 4 subcore (081594, August 15, 1994), so it's assumed that AMIBIOS 5 is a bug fix release.

Setup Utility

AMIBIOS 5 was the last version of AMIBIOS to only offer the WinBIOS Setup Utility for OEMs and motherboard manufacturers. With AMIBIOS 6, new setup utilities were included (and very early versions often had the Hi-Flex Setup Utility, rather than WinBIOS). The same older colour schemes from AMI WinBIOS (AMIBIOS 4) were also kept.

Bugs and quirks

Like WinBIOS (AMIBIOS 4), as the AMIBIOS 5 setup utility mimicked the Windows 3.xx user interface, it was mainly designed for use with a mouse rather than with a keyboard, although it can still be operated with a keyboard. It was also not compatible with some mouse, which in such situations operation through a keyboard to use setup utility is required. AMIBIOS 5 also takes a few more seconds to load the setup utility if a mouse is not detected (just like WinBIOS). This is likely because by default it assumes a mouse is installed, however when one is not, it renders the setup utility again for keyboard only operation.

Some users of AMIBIOSes with the WinBIOS Setup Utility (probably also including AMIBIOS 5) have also reported display issues with the setup utility, where the monitor would either flicker or nothing would be displayed when setup is launched.