AMIBIOS 5

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Revision as of 17:41, 22 January 2024 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) in the string. 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 core (with the date 081594, August 15, 1994), so it's assumed AMIBIOS 5 is a bug fix release only.

Setup Utility

AMIBIOS 5 was the last version of AMIBIOS to only offer the WinBIOS Setup Utility. With AMIBIOS 6, new setup utilities were included. The same colour schemes from AMI WinBIOS (AMIBIOS 4) were 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 used with a keyboard. It was also not compatible with some mouse interfaces, which in such situations operating through a keyboard 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.