BIOS and System Vendors That MSD.EXE Identifies (123411)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0a
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.0
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.2
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.21
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.22
This article was previously published under Q123411

SUMMARY

Microsoft Diagnostics (MSD) reports the "Computer Name" and "BIOS Manufacturer" below the Computer button and in the Computer Information section of the printed report. The name displayed in this section is generated from a string found in the system's ROM BIOS memory image. MSD uses a list of known computer manufacturer and BIOS vendor names and searches until one is found. If no known string is found, the string "Unknown" is used.

MORE INFORMATION

The lists of names that MSD recognizes as vendors are shown below. The names must appear in the ROM BIOS memory image exactly as listed here for MSD to find them. Note that some strings include a trailing space character.

Computer Manufacturers

"AIR "            "ALR "            "AST "           "AT&T"
"Acer"            "Altec"           "Altos"          "Amkly"
"Ampro"           "Amstrad"         "Apricot"        "Aquiline"
"Arche"           "Austin"          "Brother"        "Bull "
"CSS "            "Cardinal"        "Cheetah"        "Chicony"
"Club "           "Commodore"       "CompuAdd"       "Compudyne"
"Comtrade"        "Cumulus"         "DEC "           "DFI"
"DTK "            "Data General"    "Dell "          "Dolch"
"Dolsh"           "Elonex"          "Elonex"         "Emerson"
"Epson"           "Ergo"            "Everex"         "Gateway"
"Goldstar"        "Grid"            "Hauppauge"      "Headstart"
"Hewlett Packard" "Hewlett-Packard" "Hynudai"        "Koyro"
"Laser"           "Leading Edge"    "Matsushita"     "Micro Express"
"Mitac"           "Mitsuba"         "Mitsubishi"     "NCR "
"NEC "            "Nokia"           "Normerel"       "Norsk"
"Northgate"       "Ogivar"          "Orange"         "Osicom"
"PC Brand"        "PC Craft"        "Packard Bell"   "Panasonic"
"Parallan"        "Polywell"        "Psion"          "Reply"
"SAI "            "SDI "            "Schmit"         "Sharp"
"Siemens"         "Smith Corona"    "Sperry"         "Swan"
"Tandem"          "Tandon"          "Tandy"          "Televideo"
"Telex"           "Texas Inst"      "Toshiba"        "US Micro"
"Unisys"          "Victor"          "Wang"           "Wyse"
"Xerox"           "Zenith"*         "Zeos"
*When the string "Zenith" is found, "Zenith Data Systems" is displayed in the MSD reports.

ROM BIOS Vendors

"American Megatrends"   "AMI "                  "Artek"
"Award"                 "Compaq"                "Datatech"
"Data Tech"             "DTK"                   "ERSO"
"IBM"                   "Intel"                 "Micronics"
"Monolithic"            "Mylex"                 "Olivetti"
"Phoenix"               "Seiko"                 "Ultima"
"Western Digital"       "Zenith"                "(C)ZDS "
In addition to searching for the above specific strings only, MSD also searches in specific locations only. These locations are places either found empirically in testing or supplied by ROM BIOS or system vendors.

The following offsets within segment F000h are searched-for strings from the Computer Manufacturer or BIOS Vendor name list. These values represent the start of the search range. The pattern match goes beyond the end of these ranges by ({length of pattern} - 1) bytes. 
0000 - 00FF,      1000 - 10FF,      12A0 - 12BF,      6000 - 60FF,
8000 - 80FF,      8D00 - 8DFF,      A140 - A14F,      A440 - A45F,
AF70 - AFAF,      B3F0 - B4EF,      C000 - C0FF,      D000 - D0FF,
E000 - E0FF,      E300 - E37F
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:5/6/2003
Keywords:KB123411
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