IBM PS2 and PC BIOS Interface Technical Reference
The IBM Personal System/2 and Personal Computer BIOS Interface Technical Reference, Second Edition (May 1988), is IBM's 466-page BIOS and Advanced BIOS (ABIOS) interface reference. It covers the whole IBM product line of the period, not just PS/2: the PC Convertible, PCjr, Personal Computer, XT, AT and the PS/2 models.
What it contains
[edit | edit source]- Section 1, Introduction to BIOS — how interrupts and parameter passing work, data areas and ROM tables, BIOS level determination and the system groups.
- Section 2, Interrupts — the full interrupt reference with per-product exceptions noted: 02H NMI, 05H print screen, 08H system timer, 09H keyboard, 10H video, 11H equipment determination, 12H memory size, 13H diskette and 13H fixed disk, 14H asynchronous communications, 15H system services, 16H keyboard, 17H printer, 19H bootstrap loader and 70H real-time clock.
- Section 3, Data Areas and ROM Tables — the BIOS data area, the extended BIOS data area and the ROM tables.
- Supplements — the Asynchronous Communications and Programmable Option Select supplements are bound in, with a contents page for filing further ones.
What it does not contain
[edit | edit source]Interface documentation, not source: there is no BIOS listing. (The 5150 and XT technical references do print full BIOS assembler listings; IBM stopped doing that with the PS/2.) No FRUs, no hardware service content, no component values.
What it settles
[edit | edit source]BIOS level determination — the documented way to tell which machine and which BIOS revision code is running on, rather than guessing from a date string. This is the book to cite when a repair depends on knowing the BIOS vintage.
Download it here: IBM PS2 and PC BIOS Interface Technical Reference.pdf