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4.1 Desktop Management Interface (DMI)
The system board comes with a DMI built into the BIOS. DMI, along
with the appropriately networked software, is designed to make
inventory, maintenance and troubleshooting of computer systems easier.
With DMI, a network administrator or MIS engineer can remotely
access some information about a particular computer system without
physically going to it. Quite often a service call may be unnecessary as
the problem can be solved remotely.
The DMI utility in the BIOS automatically records various information
about your system configuration. Information about the type and speed
of CPU, type and amount of memory for each memory slot, BIOS
revision level, types of add-in PCI boards and components, certain
revision numbers of hardware installed, etc. are automatically detected
and stored in the DMI pool, which is a part of the system board's
Plug and Play BIOS. Additional information, such as ISA based
peripherals, which may not be automatically detected, can be manually
recorded in the DMI pool by using the Add DMI menu. The DMI pool
data is then verified or updated whenever the system hardware or
setup is altered.
4.1.1 Running the DMI Utility
To run the DMI utility, type: DMICFG.EXE. You can download this utility
from ftp.dfiusa.com - /utilities/DMI directory.
The DMI utility must run in real mode with at least 180K of base
memory. Memory managers like HIMEM.SYS (required by Windows)
must not be installed. You may do this by using one of the 3 methods
listed below.
1. Boot up from a system diskette without the AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS files,
2. REM HIMEM.SYS in the CONFIG.SYS, or
3. Press <F5> during bootup to bypass your AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS files.
Chapter 4 - Supported Softwares