TSOP flashing: reflashing the onboard BIOS chip with a hacked BIOS to circumvent the security mechanisms.

At worst, system repair involved physically pulling the BIOS chip and installing another.

What happens on Jan. 1 depends on how new and smart your BIOS chip and operating system are.

In the case of a nonbuffered real time clock, the BIOS chip will see the electronic equivalent of a red flag for 244 microseconds before the update is to occur.

A more likely explanation, in his view, is not that the affected BIOS chips are taking too long to identify the year 2000 date, but that they are simply confused by encountering "00."

Many personal computers have a BIOS chip, displaying text in English during boot time.

Dell's "flash" BIOS chip can be changed through software and thereby upgraded someday to adopt the Plug and Play standard, aimed at making hardware installation easier.

Technically, however, it was possible to replace the BIOS chip, and methods for recovering hard disk data emerged later.

This is a major concern, as an infected BIOS could require the actual BIOS chip to be replaced to ensure the malicious code is completely removed.

Some BIOS chips allow overclocking, an action in which the CPU is adjusted to a higher clock rate than its factory preset.