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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsRichard W. Cheston, Daryl Carvis Cromer, Howard Jeffrey Locker, David B. Rhoades, James Peter Ward
Estimating the term…
A system and method for storing adapter card Option ROM BIOS extensions on the system's DASD and, more particularly, on a partition of the DASD that is generally inaccessible to the operating system. The system may partition the system DASD into a user partition and a hidden partition where the hidden partition is preferably inaccessible to the operating system. BIOS extensions files are stored in the hidden partition. The system BIOS, when executed, identifies the peripheral devices on the system and interrogates the hidden partition for BIOS extension files corresponding to each of the identified devices. If the hidden partition contains a BIOS extension file corresponding to an identified peripheral device, the file is verified for authenticity. If the verification completes successfully, the BIOS extension file is copied into shadow RAM and control is passed to it. In one embodiment, each BIOS extension file are downloaded to the system's DASD using a standards-based update process that is independent of the vendor or adapter card type.
A method of configuring a data processing system following a power on or hardware reset event, comprising:
A computer program product comprising a set of processor executable instructions for configuring a data processing system stored on a computer readable medium, the instructions comprising:
A data processing system including at least one processor, a system memory connected to the processor, a non-volatile storage device connected to the processor containing BIOS code, and a DASD connected to an I/O bus of the system, the BIOS containing code for configuring the data processing system, the code comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.