Apparatus and method for detecting a change in system hardware configuration to reduce the amount of time to execute a post routine

摘要

An apparatus and method are disclosed for reducing the amount of time to execute a boot sequence, such as a power-on self-test (POST) routine, by eliminating a scan for devices interfaced with a local bus associated with a computer system. A detection circuit interfaces with a card slot through the local bus and generates a status bit indicating whether the configuration of devices for the computer system changed after completion of a first boot sequence. A processor interfaces with the local bus and reads the status bit during a second boot sequence. If the status bit indicates that the computer system device configuration remains the same, the processor eliminates the scan for devices interfaced with the computer system.