Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[starhawk]

Usually they are very small, far less than even 64mb. Most are 4mb or 8mb, IIRC; most of that is probably taken up by the actual BIOS instructions themselves -- it doesn't make sense for a motherboard company to buy bigger chips than they will ever need.

It's electrically possible to put a bigger (data size) chip in there, SOMETIMES, but ROM pinouts (what wire does what) are not necessarily standard, the new capacity may not be fully recognized -- and then there's the matter of the specialized (for the motherboard model) programming being transferred over correctly. You can't boot a motherboard if the BIOS chip is empty!