BIOS INT 17h help wanted

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Article #5816

#5816

From: Jim Ericksen
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 1986 19:15

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	I'm writing a program which needs to read printer status via BIOS
and i've run across an inconsistency that someone out there may be able to
clarify.  Doing an INT 17h with AH=2 returns printer status in AH --- so far,
so good.  According to the BIOS documentation in the IBM Tech Ref Manual,
a '1' in bit 7 of AH signifies printer busy.  However, on the quasi-clone
machine i'm developing the program on (Sanyo MBC-555), a '0' in bit 7 appears
to indicate printer busy.  In fact, tracing through the schematics and BIOS
listing in the IBM Tech Ref leads me to believe that busy is indeed indicated
by a '0' in bit 7.

	Has anyone else encountered this anomaly who knows the real story?
Did IBM just plain screw up (and what Big Blue says is of course taken as
gospel by writers of mass-market MS-DOS books)?

	Thanks in advance,

-- 
Jim Ericksen
UNC Chapel Hill

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Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site unc.unc.UUCP
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!mcnc!unc!ericksen
From: ericksen@unc.UUCP (Jim Ericksen)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: BIOS INT 17h help wanted
Message-ID: <1069@unc.unc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 2-Mar-86 14:15:44 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.1069
Posted: Sun Mar  2 14:15:44 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Mar-86 01:44:44 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: somewhere in Chapel Hill, NC
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