What program would I use for this? Im not a programmer obviously, Im just curious as to what the inside of my bios file looks like and also to compare what it is they change when the relese a new bios.

Thanks

Well nowadays most of the BIOSes are commercial ones, so you aren't actually supposed to see what's "inside". If I'm right there is a free alternative (or many) too, but they're not that widely used yet.

dmidecode is one program which will read info directly from BIOS. Try using it with sysinfo-2.3 for a more readable output.
Also you can get some info with `cat /proc/driver/nvram`. (probably need to `insmod nvram` first.

Thanks, I will get a hold of those programs and play around a little. I didnt think about bios code being closed, in my mind I have always assosiated closed/open source to applications etc. I dont see what the big deal is, the motherboard manufacturers could just simply not warrantee anything without thier official bios installed.

It's not really that the BIOS code is closed-source. The code in a BIOS is machine-code and not readily understandable by ordinary humans. There are sites dedicated to BIOS hacks. The problem is that changing the code in a BIOS is extremely dangerous -even if you are 'flashing' it with the manufacturers' utility. If there is a power outage during flashing your motherboard becomes useless -unless you have an identical replacement BIOS which you can plug in there to boot with. Once booted you can remove the good BIOS, plug in the old one and reflash it. Sounds pretty spooky, huh?
Using dmidecode or other such tools just reads the info and prints it out in a human-readable form for you.

I found a Award Bios editor that allows a person to unlock features, etc here.

http://awdbedit.sourceforge.net/

This is exiting! I wonder what I can break now. LOL