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Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso
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WHYPHNX.DOC
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Wrap
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1991-09-07
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5KB
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88 lines
WHY DOES MICRO FIRMWARE USE PHOENIX BIOS?
When our original company sought to license a BIOS product for its
line of computer systems back in 1988, Phoenix Technologies was the
obvious choice. Phoenix was the first to have available many of the
newer features, such as user defined hard drive types and 1.44 meg
drive support. Many institutional and government bids specify Phoenix.
And most of all, Phoenix pioneered the IBM compatible BIOS, and the
legal means by which they could develop a product that is fully compatible
with IBM's BIOS, without infringing on IBM's copyright.
We also preferred Phoenix's Power On Self Test, which is extremely
thorough, yet relatively fast and doesn't make a big mess on the screen.
We also felt comfortable knowing that Phoenix had been in the compatibility
business longer than anyone else, and had by far the largest installed
base worldwide.
Like in most other markets, competing companies soon catch up with
the innovations of others, and in general, most offer largely the
same technology. We aren't going to tell you that there is a major
difference that you or your customers will notice from one BIOS brand
to another, assuming that they are all specifically and properly
tailored to the hardware, and free of bugs.
SO WHY ARE THERE SO MANY MACHINES WITH AMI AND OTHER BRANDS?
One thing to consider when trying to second guess a computer maker's
motives is cost. Most people agree that competition in the
PC business is very stiff to say the least, and to say that a low
price is a large factor in the selection of PC components by many
vendors is an understatement. With this in mind, it is imporant to
note the difference in price between Phoenix, the pioneer in the compatibility
software industry, and the relatively new vendors that had to compete
by offering significantly lower licensing fees.
With PC manufacturers selling '286-12 motherboards to distributors
for $65 each, (and the CPU and chip set is a large part of that cost),
it's no surprise that many manufacturers will jump at saving $5 to
$7 on each motherboard by using the cheaper BIOS. Think about
it!
When we looked at recent PC Magazine reviews to see just how
many machines had a given BIOS brand, we noticed something interesting.
Of the 45 '386-33s reviewed in the December 25, 1990 issue, 14 systems
have a Phoenix BIOS, 25 systems have AMI, three have Award, and three
have another brand. The Editor's Choice has a Phoenix BIOS. The
article mentioned that 26 more '386-33s would be reviewed in the next
issue. So we took a look in the January 15 issue, and this time 7
have Phoenix, 13 have AMI, and one has Award. Two systems shared
the Editor's Choice honors, and both have the Phoenix BIOS.
Then we looked at the nine cached 20 Mhz '386SX PCs reviewed in the
April 30, 1991 issue. Of these, 2 have Phoenix, 3 have AMI, 2 have
Award, and 2 have another brand. The Editor's Choice has Phoenix.
Of the forty non-cached 20 Mhz '386SX PCs reviewed in the November
29, 1990 issue, 10 have Phoenix, 18 have AMI, 5 have Award, and 7
have another brand. Two shared the Editor's Choice, with the best
overall package containing a Phoenix BIOS. The second choice
has AMI.
After having said all this, we're not saying that these machines were
awarded Editor's Choice because of their BIOS. In fact, in all these
reviews, there is no mention of any preference for or problems with
any particular BIOS brand... (even though we happen to know that there
are some definite problems with some of the brands and revisions
of BIOS in some of the machines reviewed.)
But one cannot help but notice that for whatever reason, the vendors
that tend to make Editor's Choice decided to spend more money
to license the Phoenix BIOS.
WHEN UPGRADING, SHOULDN'T WE STICK WITH THE SAME BRAND
OF BIOS THAT THE MACHINE CAME WITH?
Not necessarily... especially since the vast majority of machines
you'll need to upgrade are not supported by a manufacturer's BIOS
upgrade program. Thus, you have to rely on a third party who develops
ROM BIOS upgrades for many of the popular machines for which there
is a demand for BIOS upgrades.
That third party is us, Micro Firmware, and we use Phoenix! Nobody
else matches our selection of BIOS upgrades for the many popular systems
and hardware platforms, nor can anyone match our techincal expertese
that you need in order to get the right BIOS for your customer's
machine.