On 11 Dec 2001, at 6:25, Robin Smith wrote:

> For those of us still learning, can you expand on this. What is
> flashing the BIOS and why won't it allow more physical ram?
>
> Robin

  BIOSes used to be stored on ROM (EPROM, actually) chips, but most
modern motherboards use "flash" memory instead.  The big difference
is that the contents of flash memory can be rewritten in place on the
motherboard -- to update an EPROM, you'd have to take it out of the
motherboard and use a special "EPROM burner" device to rewrite the
contents.

  "flashing the BIOS" is installing an update to the BIOS code by
running a utility to rewrite the flash memory with the new code
version.  It's a way of correcting bugs or enabling new features in
systems that have already been bought and used.

  The original poster's theory was that updating to a more recent
BIOS version might allow his system to take advantage of higher-
density memory modules than it originally supported.
  Andrew's suggestion is that the system's limited RAM capacity
probably represents limitations in the actual hardware, such as the
memory controller, rather than in the BIOS software, and so a BIOS
update cannot "correct" this aspect of the motherboard's design.

David Gillett

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