3.9 Booting the System for the First Time
3.9.3 Standard CMOS setup screen
The instructions regarding choices in this environment can be found in the corresponding section in the motherboard manual. A typical Configuration Setup screen is shown in Figure . Through this screen, the desired configuration values can be entered into the CMOS registers. The cursor on the screen can be moved from item to item using the keyboard's cursor control keys. The standard CMOS setup screen includes the basic operating parameters that need to be set for the system to work correctly. These BIOS features are typically universal for all PCs.

The fields available for entering configuration data that are commonly found on this screen are Date, Time, Hard Disks, Drive A, Drive B, Video, and Halt On.

  • Date and Time – These first two fields are used for setting the clock that governs the settings in the operating system. The date and time are required for many types of software applications to manage data. The format required is very important. For the initial system setup, a default date is usually assigned (e.g., January 1, 1980). The time is given in the 24-hour format, similar to military time.
  • Hard Disks – This section contains fields that identify devices attached to the two IDE controllers integrated on the motherboard. IDE controllers can have up to two hard drives or one hard drive and another IDE device such as a CD-ROM. Normally, one is configured as a master and the other as a slave. There can be four configuration entries, including Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, and Secondary Slave. It is usually recommended to set the drive type to Auto. This allows the BIOS to auto-detect and configure the hard drives so that this information does not have to be entered manually.
  • Drive A: and Drive B: – This section identifies the types of floppy disk drives using the options available. In this instance there is only one drive, a 3.5" High Density 1.44 MB floppy drive. There is none for Drive B: since none was installed.
  • Video – This section identifies the video adapter. The choices here are very few and the default EGA/VGA has been the standard for everything since 1990. Whether VGA, SVGA, or anything more advanced, all the video adapters since 1990 will support the basic VGA BIOS instructions built into the system BIOS.
  • Halt On – This is the last user definable field in the Standard CMOS screen. The choices here allow a specific system response to errors. This is so error problems can be reported before they corrupt data.

In addition, the informational box in the lower right corner of the screen has non-user definable screens that give information on the total memory configuration of a system.