AwardBIOS (also known as Award Modular BIOS and later as Phoenix - AwardBIOS) is a personal computer BIOS developed by Award Software from 1984 to 1998 and then by Phoenix Technologies from 1998 to 2009.
Merge with Phoenix Technologies
On April 16, 1998, Award Software announced a merger with Phoenix Technologies to create a $100 million BIOS development company. It was completed on September 28th of that year, and as a result, Award went bankrupt while Phoenix survived.
PhoenixNet controversy
Main page: PhoenixNet
In 2000, Phoenix developed an add-on for AwardBIOS called PhoenixNet, which allowed motherboard manufacturers and system labelers to advertise their services during POST, change the browser home page, and automatically install sponsored tools on the system after a clean Windows installation. It was heavily criticized by users for privacy concerns and performance issues on systems with it enabled. It was finally discontinued a year later due to "the demise of the Internet advertising market".
List of known versions
| Version | Release date | POST screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| AwardBIOS 1.xx | 1984? | Not available | Confirmed existence by a file of a BIOS version database. 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 | 1990 | 
|
Mostly used on motherboards with EISA expansion buses |
| AwardBIOS v4.20/4.26/4.28/4.32 | 1991-1992 | 
|
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(?) | 
|
Considered as AwardBIOS v5.00 internally by Award. |
| AwardBIOS v6.00PG | 1998-1999 | 
|
Codenamed "Medallion". Also known as Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG and Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG. Code forks from ASUS and Gigabyte do exist. A sub-version called WorkstationBIOS also exists. |
