What is the CMOS and what is the BIOS on a computer?

CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) is a specific technology which is utilized in making semiconductors. These semiconductors are also called integrated circuits and include processors, chipset chips, DRAM, etc. Various types of batteries are used for driving the CMOS. CMOS checksum is sometimes used as an error-detecting code.

The BIOS setting helps you to save the work in your computer; it is the non volatile memory, different from the other type of memories and is called CMOS memory. Each time you switch off the computer, the CMOS memory does the needful for you.

BIOS mean Basic Input/Output System. Being the lowest level software in a computer, BIOS acts as an interface between the operating system and the hardware. The function of the BIOS is to provide access to the system hardware. The creation of the higher operating system like DOS, Windows 95, control of computer’s hardware settings, booting up the machine are all done by the BIOS.

Once the BIOS setting is changed, the checksum is rendered by totaling all the bytes in the CMOS memory and then stacking away the lowest byte of the sum. Every time the system is booted, it recalculates the checksum and contrasts it to the stored value. If the two values the different then your system would let you know that CMOS has been corrupted.

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