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What's a BIOS

besides a place for settings and stuff that are in bios what is a bios. can a pc run without it? howcome some emulators need them and others dont?
I think you can somewhat describe as the "software" that is on a certain piece of hardware (although software probably isn't the right term here since I don't think you can modify it). Imagine it as some standalone "operating system" that your actual OS is basing upon.

In PCs, for example, the BIOS is somewhere on the motherboard. This allows you to turn on your PC and do certain settings even without having a real operating system or certain hardware installed yet.

The same thing goes for modern consoles, I guess. For example: When you turn on your 3DS without even having any cartridge inserted, you can still get into the 3DS menu without problems. That's actually the system's firmware you're in. But I guess the firmware is closesly connected to the BIOS. It's probably some kind of interface for the BIOS.

Yeah, it's hard to describe and then again I don't know that much about it, but I guess you can just imagine BIOS as some kind of program/IO system that is bound to a certain piece of hardware.
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The BIOS is a small program on the motherboard that serves two purposes:

1. Initializing hardware (and also checks to make sure the hardware is working)
2. Loading a bootloader (which in turn loads your operating system)