ericksen@unc.UUCP (Jim Ericksen) (03/02/86)
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