AMIBIOS

AMIBIOS is a computer BIOS formerly developed by Access Methods Inc. and then by AMI (American Megatrends). It was developed from 1985 until 2011 when it was replaced by AMI Aptio.

The purchase of AMIBIOS from Access Methods
In 1985, Subramonian Shankar and Pat Sarma founded Quintessential Consultants Inc. (QCI) with funds from a previous consulting venture, Access Methods Inc. (AMI). Due to legal issues between the owners of Access Methods Inc., Sarma bought out Access Methods Inc., however, Access Methods still owned the rights to the AMIBIOS. By that time, the AMIBIOS had become popular and well established, which resulted in QCI renaming to American Megatrends Inc. (AMI). This made it possible for the now American Megatrends to buy the rights to the AMIBIOS, while keeping the well recognisable acronym, AMIBIOS.

AMIBIOS "Pre-Color" (1987 - 1991)
Note: As the exact naming for this version of AMIBIOS is unknown, it is given the "Pre-Color" nickname to list and identify it and it's cores. Please note that "Pre-Color" is not an official name.

AMIBIOS Pre-Color is the earliest known version of AMIBIOS made by American Megatrends. It is given the nickname "Pre-Color" by BIOS enthusiasts due to it's black and white setup utility (as later versions of AMIBIOS included a colourful setup utility). Known Pre-Color variants (not core dates) are "286-BIOS" (used on 80286 motherboards), "386-BIOS" (used on 80386 motherboards) and "486-BIOS" (used on very early 80486 motherboards).

Pre-Color was more limited compared to newer versions of AMIBIOS in terms of options, although for it's time it still contained a variety of options.The AMIBIOS Pre-Color can contain a limited version of AMIDIAG, which is a PC Diagnostics Utility made and sold separately by American Megatrends. The BIOS string located at the bottom of the screen during the memory count will begin with the letter "D" if AMIDIAG is present in the BIOS. Otherwise, the BIOS string may begin with "S" if there is no AMIDIAG, or with "E" if there is an extended setup utility for the chipset added by the motherboard manufacturer. To access the setup utility, AMIDIAG or extended setup utility (where applicable), the Delete key should be pressed during the memory count. If AMIDIAG or the extended setup utility is present on the system, there will be an option to pick the standard setup utility, "Diagnostics" or "Extended setup" respectively.

The AMIBIOS Pre-Color had configuration options for hard disks with huge sizes (for the time) up to around 36 GB. Although, due to lack of LBA (Logical Block Addressing) support, it couldn't read/write from hard disks bigger than 504 MB in size despite having the option for configuring up to around 36 GB.

Known Pre-Color core versions are listed below, although please note that Pre-Color core version was frequently changed and there is a chance some of these core versions could be edited by motherboard manufacturer or OEMs:

AMIBIOS Hi-Flex (1991 - 1994)
Not to be confused with the "AMIBIOS Hi-Flex Setup Utility" for AMIBIOS 6 AMIBIOS Hi-Flex was the first version that officially included a colourful setup utility, therefore it's usually known among BIOS enthusiasts as "AMI Color", despite it's official name being "AMIBIOS Hi-Flex" according to the book "Programmer's guide to the AMIBIOS", although the name "Hi-Flex" wasn't used anywhere in the BIOS, therefore the "Hi-Flex" name is rarely used for this BIOS to not confuse it with the AMIBIOS 6's Hi-Flex Setup Utility.

With AMIBIOS Hi-Flex, the limited version of AMIDIAG was removed and only the setup utility was present. However, many more options and different colour schemes (a total of 16) were included within the Setup Utility. The default colour scheme has a combination of Green/Purple/Orange colours, although the default scheme could've changed by OEMs (for example, HP used to change the default colour to blue on their AMIBIOS Hi-Flex computers).

The AMIBIOS Hi-Flex also introduced a new string style compared to previous versions.

Hi-Flex also increased the 36 GB max configurable size to around 64 GB, although since LBA was not a thing by the time Hi-Flex was released (it became a standard with WinBIOS) and therefore since most Hi-Flexes lack LBA support, the maximum size Hi-Flex supported was still mostly 504 MB. Also, Hi-Flexes with LBA support (also labeled as "large disk support" sometimes) in BIOS Setup could use hard disks up to 32 GB. Despite introducing support for configuring disks up to 64 GB, until late releases of AMIBIOS 6, AMIBIOS had a disk size limit of 32 GB, even with LBA. This limit may avoided by using Ontrack Disk Manager or it's alternatives.

Known Hi-Flex core versions are listed below:

AMI WinBIOS (1993 - 1994)
Not to be confused with the "WinBIOS Setup Utility" for AMIBIOS 6

AMI WinBIOS is the first known BIOS in the world to introduce a Setup Utility with a graphical user interface. However, it did not use any graphics modes. Instead, character redefinition was used to make characters which put together look like a graphics mode. The entire setup utility was displayed this way, making usage of the mouse pixel perfect.

Some video cards did not support this character redefinition, and if the setup utility were to be ran on some of those video cards, the setup utility user interface was drawn more traditionally with block and line drawing characters from the video card's character ROM. This mode of drawing the setup utility was also put in effect if the keyboard controller on the motherboard was not compatible with the BIOS. However, this is only seen on a few select BIOSes. Some features such as the colour toggle would also be disabled if the keyboard controller was incompatible.

The user interface of the WinBIOS' Setup Utility was inspired by Microsoft Windows 3.x, therefore the name "WinBIOS". WinBIOS' Setup Utility had four colour options; LCD (usually the default), Army, Pastel and Sky. On some WinBIOSes, the colour changing option is completely absent. WinBIOS was also the first AMIBIOS to officially include LBA (Logical Block Addressing) support by default, although the maximum disk support was still 32 GB (even though the BIOS can configure disks up to 64 GB).

Known WinBIOS core versions are listed below:

Reported Issues
WinBIOS' mouse support was limited and it could not detect some mouses, depending on the motherboard or the mouse bus.

There are also claims of WinBIOS' Setup Utility having display issues on some monitors and causing monitor flickering on some internet forums.

AMIBIOS 6 (1995 - 2000)
AMIBIOS 6 was a major release of AMIBIOS and is very common among hardware from mid to late-90s and very early-2000s. It's also usually known with the core "071595" (July 15, 1995), although a few sub-cores from late-90s do exist as well.

On AMIBIOS 6, the maximum disk size was still 32 GB for earlier versions (despite the BIOS allowing you to configure up to 64 GB), although later versions with support for more than 127 sector translation in BIOS Setup support drives up to 2 TB.

AMIBIOS 6 later also became available in VGA resolution with Hi-Flex setup utility, although it's very rare and it was mostly used on boards with multilanguage support in BIOS.

Known AMIBIOS 6 core versions are listed below:

Setup Utilities of AMIBIOS 6
AMIBIOS 6 has got a huge variety of setup utilities over the years, including Hi-Flex (based on the AMIBIOS Hi-Flex's setup utility), WinBIOS (based on AMI WinBIOS' setup utility), Easy Setup and Simple Setup.

Hi-Flex (1995 - 2000)
The Hi-Flex Setup Utility is in a blue colour set by default, unlike the AMIBIOS Hi-Flex. The amount of colour sets were also dropped from 16 to 8, although each colour set was renewed and simplified and had little in common with the older AMIBIOS Hi-Flex colour sets. Hi-Flex was one of the most common setup utilities of AMIBIOS 6.

Very early Hi-Flex setup utilities (1995) did not mention "Hi-Flex" anywhere, like the AMIBIOS Hi-Flex, although, by 1996 the title "AMIBIOS HI-FLEX SETUP UTILITY" was used in the title.

The Hi-Flex Setup Utility also existed in VGA resolution (640x480), although it's rare and it's usually seen on BIOSes that support languages other than English.

WinBIOS (1995 - 1998)
A new version of WinBIOS with some changes and new features were added for AMIBIOS 6 with this setup utility. The differences between the original WinBIOS and AMIBIOS 6's WinBIOS Setup Utility are the introduction of an animated mouse pointer, removal of the Energy Star logo, smaller AMI logo, exit button colour change, inclusion of PCI/PnP setting, inclusion of a smaller font and screen resolution change. The screen resolution was changed from 640x350 to 640x400 with 1995/Version 2.x.

AMI abandoned working on the WinBIOS Setup Utility somewhere around in 1998, although some OEMs and motherboard manufacturers, like TriGem and SuperMicro, kept on using it even after that date. TriGem even often changed the date.

Easy Setup (1997 - 2000)
Easy Setup was AMI's first setup utility that required the enter key to select a value and change it, like the AMIBIOS 7's New Setup Utility and AMIBIOS 07.00.xx's setup utility and AMIBIOS 8's "BIOS SETUP UTILITY". It looked similar to the setup utility used on the pre-2000s Intel AMI fork, albeit with a cyan top bar and with control help on the bottom.

Easy Setup was mostly used by Tyan for their motherboards and Packard Bell. Easy Setup wasn't used much compared to other setup utilities.

Simple Setup (1997 - 2000)
Simple Setup was a setup utility created by AMI in 1997 for the AMIBIOS 6. It was intended to look like AwardBIOS v4.5x's setup utility.

Earlier versions were less like Award Setup, while later versions were almost identical to the AwardBIOS v4.5x's setup utility.

Reported issues
Thomas Pabst of Tom's Hardware reported problems with AMIBIOS 6 regarding it distributing IRQ signals to every PCI and ISA expansion slot in an article about Intel 440BX motherboards. Although the problems were reported on AMIBIOS 6 with the WinBIOS Setup Utility, other versions of AMIBIOS 6 probably have this issue as well.

Early versions of AMIBIOS 6 were reported having issues regarding Plug & Play support. This issue possibly also affects AMI WinBIOS. Although according to some claims the PnP issues were fixed by around 1997.

Known AMIBIOS 6 Users

 * AAEON
 * Acrosser
 * AMI (WinBIOS, Hi-Flex)
 * AOpen (WinBIOS)
 * ASUS (Easy Setup)
 * BCM/GVC (Hi-Flex, Easy Setup)
 * Biostar
 * Corvalent/OmniTech (Hi-Flex)
 * DataExpert (WinBIOS)
 * DTK (WinBIOS)
 * Edom/WinTech
 * FIC (WinBIOS, Easy Setup)
 * Freetech/Flexus
 * Freeway (Hi-Flex)
 * Gigabyte (Simple Setup)
 * Intel (Fork)
 * InterGraph
 * MSI (Hi-Flex, Simple Setup)
 * M-Tech/MTI (Hi-Flex)
 * PCPartner (Hi-Flex, WinBIOS)
 * PCChips/ECS/Matsonic/Amptron (Simple Setup)
 * Q-Lity/Quanta
 * Supermicro (WinBIOS)
 * Legend QDI (WinBIOS)
 * TMC/MyComp/MyNix/Megastar (WinBIOS)
 * TriGem (WinBIOS)
 * Tyan (Hi-Flex)
 * Zida

AMIBIOS 07.00.xx (1999 - 2002)
AMIBIOS 07.00.xx is a very uncommon version of AMIBIOS, only used on a few Pentium III and early-2000s Xeon boards, usually ones with Intel 815 family or Serverworks Xeon chipsets. Despite the version number, it's closer to AMIBIOS 8 than it is to AMIBIOS 7 in terms of features and overall looks. It's unknown if AMIBIOS 07.00.xx was a supposed public development release of AMIBIOS 8 or just a very early AMIBIOS 8, as AMIBIOS 7 (07.00.10, not to be confused with 07.00.xx) looks completely different.

Very early versions of AMIBCP for Windows (such as the 2.25 beta release) also can open 07.00.xx BIOSes along with AMIBIOS 8s, which further indicates 07.00.xx was probably an early AMIBIOS 8 prototype and the other AMIBIOS 7 was just a stop gap release between 07.00.xx and 8.

Not much is known about AMIBIOS 07.00.xx asides from the fact that it's very uncommon and it was only used on a few amount of motherboards, usually ones manufactured by SuperMicro in early-2000s or on some SBCs (Single Board Computers). It was also used on the AMI Olympus II motherboard (which has an Intel 815E chipset).

AMIBIOS 07.00.xx's maximum drive support is unknown, although it's most likely 2 TB like AMIBIOS 8.

Unlike on previous versions of AMIBIOS, AMIBIOS 07.00.xx and 8 do not have specific core versions and the core version changes depending on the exact BIOS compile date (as indicated with the "Date: xx/xx/xx" line on the sign on). Therefore, it's impossible to list all the core dates for AMIBIOS 07.00.xx.

The Setup Utility
Unlike AMIBIOS 8's Setup Utility, AMIBIOS 07.00.xx only has one known setup utility option and the gradient bar at the top is doesn't scroll (it's a still gradient). Although other than that it looks almost the same as the AMIBIOS 8 Setup Utility.

Like the AMIBIOS 8 Setup Utility, it has three different colour sets, which can be switched with the F2/F3 keys (even though setup doesn't mention it), default gray with blue bar, blue with grey bar and black with white bar.

Known AMIBIOS 07.00.xx Users

 * AMI
 * Gateway
 * Supermicro
 * Tyan

AMIBIOS 7 (07.00.10) (2001 - 2005)
Not to be confused with AMIBIOS 07.00.xx

AMIBIOS 7, also known as 07.00.10, is a release of AMIBIOS that is usually known with the core "040201" (April 2, 2001).

One of the things AMIBIOS 7 brought was support for drives up to 2 TB, unlike the 32 GB maximum limit on earlier versions of AMIBIOS 6.

AMIBIOS 7 also included a boot menu and the network boot option for the first time for AMIBIOS.

AMIBIOS 7 was not used much (it was mainly used by a couple of motherboard manufacturers such as MSI, ECS/PC Chips and ASRock and by Acrosser for their Single Board Computers in early-2000s) and it was quickly replaced by AMIBIOS 8 in around late-2001. Therefore, it's one of the rarest, although not the rarest, versions of AMIBIOS.

AMIBIOS 7 was available in both VGA (640x480) and EGA (640x350) resolutions, although it was in VGA most of the time.No cores for AMIBIOS 7 other than 040201 are known and there is a possible chance 040201 was the only core made for AMIBIOS 7 as it was replaced by AMIBIOS 8 in just months, although this can't be confirmed for now.

Setup Utilities
Like AMIBIOS 6, AMIBIOS 7 had a couple of different setup utilities, one resembling the later Hi-Flex setup utility of AMIBIOS 6 (seen in VGA or EGA), another resembling the later Simple Setup utility, again from AMIBIOS 6, and "Easy Setup Utility" resembling the 1994 and onwards PhoenixBIOS setup utility and most likely based on the AMIBIOS 6's Easy Setup Utility. The VGA versions of these setup utilities with the version number "3.31a" were all dubbed "New Setup Utility" (Except for VGA Easy Setup Version 2.01a which calls itself "Easy Setup Utility"), but the EGA versions were all directly ported from AMIBIOS 6, therefore they kept their original names. The Easy Setup Utility was also seen in EGA and under the name "AMIBIOS SETUP UTILITY", however all known instances of this were on ASRock motherboards.

Please note that EGA versions of Hi-Flex and Simple Setup were directly forked from AMIBIOS 6 and look exactly like their AMIBIOS 6 versions, therefore they will not be included in the gallery below.

Known AMIBIOS 7 Users

 * MSI (Simple Setup)
 * Asrock (Easy Setup)
 * ECS/PCChips/Matsonic/Amptron (Simple Setup)
 * Lite-On (Hi-Flex)
 * Acrosser (Hi-Flex)
 * Abit (Simple Setup)
 * Gigabyte (Simple Setup, Easy Setup)
 * BCM (On Lite-On OEM boards)

AMIBIOS 8 (2001 - 2011)
AMIBIOS 8 was the final version of AMIBIOS ever made (excluding earlier AMI Aptio BIOSes for home computers that lacked EFI/UEFI support). It is heavily based on AMIBIOS 07.00.xx with some slight differences, which is believed to be a pre-release version of AMIBIOS 8. Like AMIBIOS 07.00.xx, the core version on the string is actually the BIOS compile date.

AMIBIOS 8 was very widely used among motherboard manufacturers, especially during the 2002 - 2010 era. Examples include ASUS, ASRock, Biostar, ECS/PC Chips, Matsonic and etc. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 also used a 2006 compile of an early 2001 copyright AMIBIOS 8.

AMIBIOS 8 was mainly a bit later competitor to the AwardBIOS v6.00PG. Earliest known release of AMIBIOS 8 dates 2001. Earlier releases may exist, seeing as many elements from AMIBIOS 07.00.xx are the same in AMIBIOS 8.

Some releases of AMIBIOS 8 also included a modern Energy Star logo, although those releases are pretty rare. AMIBIOS 8 was also available with a smaller American Megatrends logo on some boards, as seen on the example for a Matsonic board on the right side.

A quirk with AMIBIOS 8 was that the Boot Menu was usually called "BBS POPUP" upon start-up.

Setup Utilities
AMIBIOS 8 had two known types of setup utilities, a new one which was first seen in AMIBIOS 07.00.xx (and now has a functional top gradient), and one based off the the AwardBIOS 6.00PG setup utility. The latter saw many variations among motherboard manufacturers who chose to use it, the most popular variation of which was one with the added top gradient. Though the former variant also sometimes appeared with just a still colour bar (for example: on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007's BIOS Setup Utility)

Known AMIBIOS 8 Users

 * Acrosser
 * ASUS
 * Biostar
 * MSI
 * Asrock
 * ECS/PCChips/Matsonic/Amptron
 * Corvalent/OmniTech
 * Supermicro
 * Soltek
 * Legend QDI
 * Pegatron
 * Foxconn
 * Microsoft (on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007)