Now we will discuss the Peripheral Setup (or Integrated Peripherals) which configure all peripherals integrated in the motherboard (onboard), including the serial ports, the parallel port the IDE port and the floppy drive controller.

The most frequent options found in this menu are:

• On-Chip VGA: Enables onboard video, if your motherboard is equipped with such facility. In case you want to disable the onboard video to install a new video board in one of the computer slots, just disable this option.
• Onboard VGA Memory Size or VGA Shared Memory Size: In computer equipped with onboard video and using UMA architecture (Unified Memory Architecture) the motherboard chipset uses part of the RAM Memory as video memory. In this option you will set how much RAM memory will be assigned to video functions. The more memory you set the worse as you will be losing memory for applications execution. The appropriate amount depends on the Windows chosen resolution. We suggest the following setup: 640x480, 1 MB; 800x600, 2 MB; 1.024x768 or 1.280x1.024, 4 MB. For instance, it is useless to assign 4MB to video if the used resolution is 640x480 as this resolution will not use more than 1MB video memory. Therefore you would waste 3MB.
• Onboard Sound: Enables onboard audio, if your motherboard is equipped with such facility. Disable this option in case you want to install an external soundboard in one available slot.
• Programming Mode: If you set this option as auto, setup will automatically set up all remaining functions of this menu. If in manual you can manually configure the existing functions.
• Onboard FDC: Enables the floppy disk unit. (leave it enabled).
• FDD AB Exchange Function or Swap Floppy Drive: Swaps logically A unit with B unit. Leave it disabled.
• Serial Port 1: Sets up serial port 1. Leave it in "Auto", "COM1", or "3F8".
• Serial Port 2: Sets up serial port 2. If you have an installed fax modem using address COM2, you have to disable motherboard serial port 2 to avoid the conflict If that is not the case, leave it in "Auto", "COM2", or "2F8".
• Serial Port 1 MIDI Support: Enables serial port 1 with MIDI interface. Leave it disabled.
• Serial Port 2 MIDI Support: Equal.
• Parallel Port: Enables the computer parallel port. Leave it as "Auto", "LPT1", or "378".
• Parallel Port Mode: Sets up the parallel port operating mode as normal ("Normal", or "SPP") or bi-directional ("Extended", or "ECP/EPP"). We suggest to set as bi-directional mode.
• Parallel Port Extended Mode: Configures the bi-directional mode which is used by parallel port - EPP or ECP. We suggest you set it as ECP which offers a highest performance.