Topology in the Parameters Pane
The library inserts under the System Configuration entry in the Parameters window three entries. System Information, BDA and XBDA information.
Description
The System BIOS library collects information about several BIOS areas. It includes the BIOS Data Area (BDA), Extended BDA, basic H/W information reported by the O/S, Programmable Interrupt Controller information (IOAPIC & PIC) and the BIOS ROM at 4GB.
Data View
The System Information View gathers basic information reported by the O/S including the machine architecture, active processors the O/S uses and application memory details
The BDA View includes information for the range 0x400-0x500 in physical memory, PIC and/or IOAPIC information and the last 64KBytes of in the 4GB space where usually the BIOS Bootblock is located. The BDA legacy information includes detailed explanation for the PC/AT documented fields. The PIC information includes interrupt ID assignment and interrupt triggering configuration.
The IOAPIC information scans for legacy mapped IOAPIC devices in the upper 4GB space. If one is found it is analyzed and its contents are printed in the main view of HWAccess under the BDA view. Such information includes the device revision, memory location, redirection entries via the IOAPIC registers.
The XBDA View includes information for the Extended BDA usually at the top of the Base memory. Very few fields are documented and only the raw data are described in this entry.
Static Configuration
The BIOS configuration has two areas.
The first refers to Operation the library will include during the scan. Options refer to whether the library should show info for the IOAPIC/PIC devices along with the Raw data for BDA and XBDA tables.
The second refers to flash/ROM device. The library can store the birary image of the ROM as long as the user specifies a size and a filename. Note the library does not autodetect the flash size so the correct size must be specified to save the entire ROM image.