Program to record BIOS settings?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris
  • Start date Start date
I have two parallel printers installed, only one will print the BIOS,
a very old Epson LX300.
Click to expand...

Int5 (the PrtSc key before Windows grabs it) prints to LPT1.
Most printers nowadays do not accept DOS Printer Codes, including new
parallel printers.
Click to expand...

The only "commands" issued by Int5 are carriage return and line feed.
A printer that won't accept them is called "broken".
 
Your welcome! And good to hear that it worked fine for you!

One tip (if you not allready didn't yourself about it)

Save the file also to disk, and maybe burn with a backup on cd also,
cause floppies get bad after some years, they really do.
Click to expand...

So do recordable CD's and DVD's, according to an article I read in the
"Business" section at Yahoo News a couple of months ago. In a warning
to businesses that use them to store customer's account data, it said
that ALL types of recordable CD and DVD disks are not of the same
quality as the commercially recorded ones (movies, music, etc.), and
start becoming unreadable after 2 to 3 years for lower quality ones,
and 3 to 5 years for better ones. It also said there is no reliable
way to tell which are lower quality and which are higher quality. It
recommended migrating the records to magnetic storage.

Dan
 
Int5 (the PrtSc key before Windows grabs it) prints to LPT1.


The only "commands" issued by Int5 are carriage return and line feed.
A printer that won't accept them is called "broken".
Click to expand...

Or: a Windows printer :-)

Many cheap laserprinters contain just the mechanics.
They leave the 'thinking' part to Windows :-)
 
So do recordable CD's and DVD's, according to an article I read in the
"Business" section at Yahoo News a couple of months ago. In a warning
to businesses that use them to store customer's account data, it said
that ALL types of recordable CD and DVD disks are not of the same
quality as the commercially recorded ones (movies, music, etc.), and
start becoming unreadable after 2 to 3 years for lower quality ones,
and 3 to 5 years for better ones. It also said there is no reliable
way to tell which are lower quality and which are higher quality. It
recommended migrating the records to magnetic storage.

Dan
Click to expand...

This is partially true: there are disks which last 20, 20, 40, or more
years.

A couple of years ago i bought 100 Mitsui disks, after doing lots of
reading about which disks where best (or good enough for me), and my
disks where said to last at least 20 years (if I remember well), and
as a matter of fact, none of them has gone bad yet.
 
This is partially true: there are disks which last 20, 20, 40, or more
years.

A couple of years ago i bought 100 Mitsui disks, after doing lots of
reading about which disks where best (or good enough for me), and my
disks where said to last at least 20 years (if I remember well), and
as a matter of fact, none of them has gone bad yet.
Click to expand...

So, according to the article, your disks are still in the reliability
period. But, of course, I hope you're right, and they do last that
long. But if that microscopically thin cover layer starts peeling,
any disk is toast ("laser rot"?).

Dan
 
So, according to the article, your disks are still in the reliability
period. But, of course, I hope you're right, and they do last that
long. But if that microscopically thin cover layer starts peeling,
any disk is toast ("laser rot"?).

Dan
Click to expand...

Hi Dan, I that they're still with the life expectancy of that article,
but I've read other articles too (cann't produce url's, sorry) that go
against the article you mention, in the way I described.

I know the side the cd-player reads is not that important, it's a
thich layer of some kind of plastic, and if it gets damaged, it can be
polished.

The data is just under the other side of the disc, where the discs
company name and disktype is printed, that is the vulnerable side, I
know.

Manuel
 
Your welcome! And good to hear that it worked fine for you!
One tip (if you not allready didn't yourself about it)
Save the file also to disk, and maybe burn with a backup on cd also,
cause floppies get bad after some years, they really do.
Click to expand...

One further question: what do you do if you have a machine with no
floppy drive? That applies to a lot of friends' machines ... and
laptops.
 
One further question: what do you do if you have a machine with no
floppy drive? That applies to a lot of friends' machines ... and
laptops.
Click to expand...

USB flash drive, CD, over a network to another computer, on the
internet to a free file storage site ...
 
USB flash drive, CD, over a network to another computer, on the
internet to a free file storage site ...
Click to expand...

What I mean is this: you normally put cmos14 onto a boot floppy and then
run it from the DOS on the boot floppy. How do you do the equivalent of
that using a boot CD?
Please be kind and come down to my level !
 
What I mean is this: you normally put cmos14 onto a boot floppy and then
run it from the DOS on the boot floppy. How do you do the equivalent of
that using a boot CD?
Please be kind and come down to my level !
Click to expand...

Set up a Win98 (or DOS, if you prefer) boot CD. Have cmos14 and the
data file on the USB drive (or another CD if you're booting into DOS).
Boot the computer. Run cmos14. (If you're booting into DOS, you
might want command.com on the cmos14 CD too.)
 
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