Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS

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Revision as of 12:13, 4 September 2024 by Rueni97 (talk | contribs)
The POST screen for Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS

Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS is a version of PhoenixBIOS based on the classic PhoenixBIOS codebase and released in 1987 by Phoenix Technologies. It was the first version of PhoenixBIOS to include a built-in CMOS setup utility, although not all instances of it include one. It also introduced a more detailed memory test (for both base and extended memory) and slight changes with some error messages during the POST.

Built-in CMOS Setup Utility

Initially, this version could be licensed from Phoenix either with one of the available options (Cyan-Blue and Black-Cyan) for the built-in setup utility or without any. Other than the color scheme and some slight cosmetic changes, both the available utilities are functionally identical.

On later instances, the PhoenixBIOS Ax86 setup utility could also be seen, which is both visually and functionally different from the earlier utilities. However it is unknown if this was an official option that was later available from Phoenix or the result of an unofficial OEM modification performed by porting the Ax86 setup utility to the older ROM BIOS PLUS codebase.

On all setup utilities, when entering the setup utility after an error has occurred during POST, a brief error log is displayed containing a list of all the errors that have occurred. This screen can be skipped by pressing any key on the keyboard.

Dell fork

Dell has forked Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS in late-80s and occasionally used it on motherboards used in their computers until the early-2010s. Many new features were added to this fork over time, such as Plug & Play and ACPI. This fork was used for a few more years for legacy BIOS boot for their servers however, with last known compile of the fork being from 2015.