Phoenix Award BIOS - Anyone have this?

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
39,908
9,608
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In the Advanced Power Management, there's an option to power-on at a specific time, hh:mm:ss, and day-of-the-month. My MSI KT3 Ultra2 board that I currently use has an AMI BIOS and it has a similar feature, but there is a "Daily" option included. The graphics I've seen of this for the Phoenix Award BIOS indicate that the default settings are Disabled and have the day-of-the-month set at zero ( 0 ). My question is if the option is Enabled and the day-of-the-month set at zero, will it fire up daily at the specified time? I'd like to be able to start at the specified time on a daily basis.
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
39,908
9,608
136
In a nutshell, the answer is that the Award BIOS does support daily start at a set time. Details below:
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I managed to figure it out, I think. I have two PC's already running, one with AMI BIOS, the other is Award, which appears to have the same feature as my new MSI mobo. The manual for the board (Epox 8K7A) says it features Every Day functionality as an option, however it looks the same as my new MSI (i.e. it just says zero as default for day of the month).

Everything I could find online for the feature ("RTC Alarm") was next to useless except for about the dozenth link, which was a PDF of a manual for the Tyan Tomcat (which I also own!). That had the clue I needed. Thing is, the feature wasn't working on my Epox system and I couldn't figure out why. The online manual said:

Award BIOS has day of the month, just like the AMI BIOS, but doesn't have Every Day or Daily. Instead it has zero ( 0 ), which is equivalent. I had to find this out myself, because documentation on the feature is as hard to find as hens teeth.

RTC Resume

If Enabled, this option allows you to set an hour/minute/second to resume (wake up), or power-up the system.

--> In order for this wake up function to work, the system must have been brought up at least past the POST before it was last shut down (i.e. if you turn the system off before the POST, the registry will not be set, and the system will not be able to wake up using this function). The settings are Enabled or Disabled (when Disabled, the hh:mm:ss cannot be set).

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So, the reason it wasn't working is that it's not enough to save the settings in BIOS, you have to restart and go past POST and then shutdown before the feature will function! Now, it works and I'm confident the feature will work in my new system, which will save me a fair amount of trouble.