Dell Inspiron 3700 System BIOS, A09

The following updates were made to the A08 BIOS to create the A09 BIOS:

Issues fixed:
1. Fixed problem where the display brightness setting is not saved
during suspend.
2. Fixed issue where Dell Control Center and Dell OpenManage Client
Instrumentation (OMCI) are unable to control the keyboard click
volume.
3. Fixed issue seen under Dell OMCI where the processor cache
information is not reported correctly.
4. Fixed issue seen under Dell OMCI where the maximum memory
supported is not reported correctly.
5. Fixed issue where a 2nd hard drive that is password protected cannot
be accessed when hot-swapped into the modular bay from a CD-ROM.
6. Fixed issue seen under Dell OMCI where the system fails to report a
critical thermal event.
7. Fixed problem where Dell Control Center is unable to set some boot
sequence options.
8. Fixed problem where the touchpad may lock up when docked to a
Port Replicator.
9. Fixed issue seen under Windows 2000 where the system detects the
Network Adapter in a Port Replicator when the Network Adapter is
disabled in System Setup but the Docking IRQ is set to IRQ 11.
10. Fixed problem in which the top of the display has a small amount
of corrupt video after resume from suspend in certain VESA modes.
11. Make sure to properly report the 'Lower Critical' temperature to
Dell OMCI.
12. Improved ability of the system to restore a hard disk drive to
its proper DMA mode after resume from suspend. This only applies
to drives that support the ATA 4 standard or higher.
13. Fixed the issue in which the drive capacity for some large hard
disk drives would be incorrectly reported by the BIOS.
14. Fixed issue where 720KB floppies cannot be read if the floppy disk
drive is hot-inserted and 1.44MB media is read first.
15. Fixed problem under Windows 2000 where the system does not always
report the correct battery charge percentage when a second battery
is present.
16. Fixed intermittent issue where turning off power during POST would
cause the system to report CMOS corruption on the next boot.
17. Fixed problem in which the system would enter suspend when the lid
was closed while both the LCD and an external CRT were active
(i.e. simul-scan mode).
18. Improved issue seen in Windows 98 where the LCD may flash on and off
several times during boot-up and shut-down.
19. Fixed problem where the touchpad locks up if it is touched while
the system is scanning information using a scanner attached to
the serial port.

Enhancements:
1. Added support for Quick Boot and Simple Boot - "Boot POST" in
System Setup.
2. Added support for APM Safe-Shutdown utility.
3. Added support for Wake on RTC - "Auto On Mode" in System Setup.
4. Added support for USB keyboards outside of Windows.
5. Allow Contrast keys to work as Brightness keys if the system has
a TFT panel.
6. Add a pop-up message when (reverse video) is pressed on
TFT systems, which don't support this function. This message
will not appear when running Windows 2000 or Windows Millennium.
7. Added Dell SMBIOS ver 1.4 support.
8. Set "Boot Third Device" to CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive in System Setup
by default.
9. Added support for newer Pentium III processor revisions.
10. Modified the System Setup layout and added improvements to
the help text.
11. Added support for booting from internal ZIP drives. In order to
boot from a ZIP drive:
- The drive must be in the system modular bay.
- A ZIP disk formatted to be bootable must be inserted into
the drive.
- No floppy disk drives can be attached to the system.
- The "Boot First Device" setting in System Setup must be
configured to "Diskette Drive".


The BIOS release has been validated on the following operating systems:
1. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 SP5
2. Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition A