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Not to be confused with AMIBIOS 7 (07.00.10)
AMIBIOS 07.00.xx, also known as AMIBIOS 07.00.00, AMIBIOS V7.0 or AMIBIOS Core 7.00, is a version of AMIBIOS released by American Megatrends in 1999 and maintained until 2001. It is mostly used on motherboards with ServerWorks ServerSet III series chipsets. It was also used on few Intel chipset motherboards (mostly with the ICH2 southbridge) alongside AMIBIOS 6 and later AMIBIOS 7 (07.00.10).
This release brought many new features over AMIBIOS 6, such as new 640x480 resolution POST and setup screens with an 8x19 font (although not on all instances), a completely different POST screen style, bitmap logo support in POST (for 640x480 resolution POST screen only), up to 2 TB hard drive support, code bug fixes and improvements. AMIBIOS 07.00.xx also retired the fixed core release dates used in the identification strings of most older AMIBIOS versions. With AMIBIOS 07.00.xx the string date is the compile date of the BIOS instead.
Setup utility
Unlike with its predecessor AMIBIOS 6 (and also its successors AMIBIOS 7 and 8), AMI only offered Easy Setup for the built-in setup utility of AMIBIOS 07.00.xx. Compared to the older version of Easy Setup from AMIBIOS 6, this version has major visual differences. Most notable of these differences are:
- Title section: The copyright string and utility version number were moved from the title to the bottom of the screen (where some control keys used to be displayed) and the title's size was reduced from two rows to only one. The utility's name was also simplified to "BIOS SETUP UTILITY" by default, although this text can be changed in AMIBCP. The cyan background was also replaced with a black/blue gradient bar; although unlike the one from some instances of AMIBIOS 8's Easy Setup, it cannot move.
- Control keys: The control key displays at the bottom were moved to the sidebar on the right, which used to only display the cursor keys (alongside help information for the highlighted setting). Although the default key functions were kept the same.
Modification tools
AMIBIOS 07.00.xx is the earliest version of AMIBIOS to be supported by the Windows 32-bit versions of AMI's BIOS modification tools. AMIBCP 2.25 Beta and some versions of MMTool for AMIBIOS 8 are known to be able to modify AMIBIOS 07.00.xx ROMs. Although newer/other versions of these tools tend to fail while opening them.
Relation with AMIBIOS 8
Based on findings in the leaked AMIBIOS 8 source code, along with their visual and functional similarities, AMIBIOS 07.00.xx is commonly theorized to be a public beta (pre-release version) of AMIBIOS 8. Although no definite proof exists, there are various factors that can support such theories. Some of these include:
- Based on internal comments and file dates, some files in the AMIBIOS 8 source code were re-used from and being developed since 07.00.xx. Although, meanwhile, some of the other files date back to around 1997, which is likely from AMIBIOS 6's development. That proves this cannot be a definite proof for such theories.
- Most instances of AMIBIOS 07.00.xx have a preliminary version number (07.00.xx) instead of a proper number (07.00.00), which further suggests it may be a beta release rather than a finalized version.
- AMIBIOS 7 (07.00.10) also uses the 07.00.xx numbering scheme, despite being based on the older AMIBIOS 6 codebase instead. This may also suggest that AMIBIOS 8 was originally planned to be released as AMIBIOS 7, but was later renamed in favor of a stop-gap release which instead became that. Although this theory is unlikely to be true, as both "BigBIOS" and "Core 7.00" are separately mentioned in the source code files.
- The scarcity of AMIBIOS 07.00.xx may also suggest it was only offered to few OEMs that may have participated in a beta program for AMIBIOS 8.