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PCI Auto Configuration
The BIOS can automatically configure PCI devices. PCI devices may be onboard or add-in cards. Auto
configuration lets a user insert or remove PCI cards without having to configure the system. When
a user turns on the system after adding a PCI card, the BIOS automatically configures interrupts, the
I/O space, and other system resources. Any interrupts set to Available in Setup are considered to be
available for use by the add-in card. Auto configuration information is stored in ESCD format.
IDE Auto Configuration
If you select Auto in the BIOS Setup program, the BIOS automatically sets up the two IDE connectors
with independent I/O channel support. The IDE interface supports hard drives up to ATA-66/100
and recognizes any ATAPI compliant devices, including CD-ROM drives, tape drives, and Ultra DMA
drives.
The BIOS determines the capabilities of each drive and configures them to optimize capacity and
performance. To take advantage of the high capacities typically available today, hard drives are
automatically configured for Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and to PIO Mode 3 or 4, depending
on the capability of the drive. You can override the auto-configuration options by specifying manual
configuration in the BIOS Setup program.
To use ATA-66/100 features the following items are required:
•
An ATA-66/100 peripheral device.
•
An ATA-66/100 compatible cable.
•
ATA-66/100 operating system device drivers.
NOTE
ATA-66/100-compatible cables are backward-compatible with drives using slower IDE transfer
protocols. If an ATA-66/100 disk drive and a disk drive using any other IDE transfer protocol are
attached to the same cable, the maximum transfer rate between the drives is reduced to that of the
slowest device.
Boot Options
In the BIOS Setup program, the user can choose to boot from a diskette drive, a hard drive, a CD-
ROM drive, or the network. The default setting is for the diskette drive to be the first boot device,
the hard drive second, and the ATAPI CD-ROM third. The fourth device is disabled.
CD-ROM and Network Boot
Booting from CD-ROM is supported in compliance with the El Torito bootable CD-ROM format
specification. Under the Boot menu in the BIOS Setup program, ATAPI CD-ROM is listed as a boot
device. Boot devices are defined in priority order. Accordingly, if there is not a bootable CD in the
CD-ROM drive, the system will attempt to boot from the next defined drive.
The network can be selected as a boot device. This selection allows booting from the on-board NIC
or a network add-in card with a remote boot ROM installed.
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Server Description
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