What is bios?

I hear of installing bios, flashing bios, bad bios, all the time. I hear them in relation to video cards and motherboards as well. But my understanding on them is super minimal. I am making a huge effort this summer to attempt to understand the more intricate areas of computer enthusiasm. Considering that, I though I'd start with this question. It is one of those things I have always wondered about but never could understand fully.

BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System, its located on a chip that sits on the mobo.
First thing that your mobo does when you press the power button is run the software written on the BIOS chip so it knows how to read the CPU, memory, hard drives, keyboard etc. so you can load an operating system from there.
I'm on my way out but someone will be along now to tell you more.

Thanks flip mode. So the bios is kinda of like a backbone? Maybe? It sounds like that it's responsibilities make it pretty vital to the computer as a whole.

So given what you just told me, what reason would someone have to say... flash or resintall a bios?

flash is reinstall actually...

and it would be motherboard or hardware issues. sometimes earlier bios's do not work properly, or 100% just like drivers for a video card. There is always room for improvement.

Ahh I see. So when people talk about flashing their vid cards... same deal? Kind of confused in that area.

i'm not 100% sure but i think thats firmware, which is ya. I'm not positive on that though... anyone else?

*edit* not sure as i have never flashed a card, nor paid attention to it.

BIOS - Pronounced "bye-ose," - Basic Input/Output System. An interface routine contained in a chip on the motherboard that controls how the system's hardware is accessed. Can be reconfigured by the user to change the operation (such as hardware boot sequence) of the system. Plays an integral role in overclocking and may allow users to change memory speeds and latency timings. The BIOS is stored in non-volatile memory and does not loose information when the system power is off.

The BIOS allows the operating system to support different types of hardware. Each piece of hardware comes with its own BIOS and /or a driver, which become part of the system's BIOS. The BIOS layer is dynamic and changes to match the computer's hardware configuration. It simply hides the differences between different hardware combinations by displaying a common interface to the os.
The os only needs to know how to communicate with the BIOS layer. It is up to the BIOS layer to translate the commands from the OS into action by the hardware. Without the BIOS layer, there is no way the OS can access the hardware layer. The BIOS layer is the OS's key to the hardware layer. That's how important the BIOS layer is in the computer system...

The BIOS though is outdated and a newer EFI (extendible firmware interface) replaces this on the macintels and with intel support it may eventually been seen on PC's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS

That should help you understand.

Jesus Pie! Thanks, Menace and Ken.