PC SWITCHES (was: DRIVPARM

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Tue Oct 1 19:25:00 2002

On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Don Maslin wrote:
> > There is a small program, the PC Magazine System Checkout Utility,
> > called STATUS.COM which should answer many of your questions as well
> > as show you the "status" of your machine's switch settings. I would
> > guess that it is still around on the web somewhere that google can
> > find it. If not, I can email it to you.

It is presumably just doing an INT 11h and parsing the bits of AX.

I used to assign that as homework to my assembly language classes.
That gave excellent practice with using AND, SHR, etc.
But the switch settings no longer provide reliable info.

Hmmmm. maybe I should assign reading the CMOS and displaying the
information that it represents.


> It has one problem though. It is confused as to OFF and ON!!!

Each of the switches is switched to "open" for "YES". Therefore, "logical
ON" became "electrical off"

One of the first rounds of IBM's "Guide to Operations" had it backwards
for the setting for the "Math coprocessor present" switch! That resulted
in half of the machines being set wrong.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred        cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Tue Oct 01 2002 - 19:25:00 BST

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