BIOS

Basic Input Output System

-starts up software before rest of software can start

-does boot-up

-is an interface for the hardware in that it controls the interrupt handlers

-either the BIOS has to support the hardware or a device driver must

CMOS

Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor

-CMOS takes little power

-it keeps a record of hardware configurations stored in the CMOS chip, which is 64 bytes

-it has CMOS RAM which is powered by a battery so that it never loses its information

Operating System (OS)

-the program that handles your other program, it is the essential program for running software and handling basic operations

-DOS, OS/2, and Windows 95 are examples of Operating Systems