Hardware & Devices

Re: Getting my Dot Matrix to Print in DOS mode

9-Jan-07 6:32

I think you're looking for this[^].

Dave Kreskowiak
Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic

Richard Andrew x649-Jan-07 14:25

Richard Andrew x64

9-Jan-07 14:25

Hi Dave,

Thank you for that, very much.

I was looking for something more along the lines of a way to set the print options in Windows so that the printer would operate in DOS mode automatically from any application.

I appreciate you taking the time to answer my post,
Rich

--------------------------------

"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing" -- Edmund Burke

Re: Getting my Dot Matrix to Print in DOS mode

Dave Kreskowiak9-Jan-07 16:55

9-Jan-07 16:55

Richie308 wrote:
would operate in DOS mode automatically from any application.

There's no such thing. About the best you're going to get is to install the Generic Text Only printer (Start/Settings/Printers/Add) and not use the driver specifically for your printer.

Dave Kreskowiak
Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic

BIOS Flashing

kasik3-Jan-07 4:39

3-Jan-07 4:39

Hi,

I've recently upgraded my (Dell Inspiron 8500 - about 3 years old) laptop's internal hard drive to a 160GB Seagate. I've had it for a few months now and every month or so when booting it would get passed the POST, then leave me with a flashing underscore in the top left. Windows wouldn't start (even after playing with fixmbr and fixboot in the recovery console) so I've had to reinstall. This has happened twice since I installed it.

After playing around and trying to think of reasons why this was happening, I noticed that the BIOS reported the size of the hard drive as 137GB and not the full 160GB (not even the 149GB after formatting). After some googling I'm fairly certain it's because of a lack of 48bit LBA support (ATA-6). This seems to be fixed in most cases by upgrading the BIOS (i'm on v3 currently and the newest available is v8, so it should, hopefully, work).

I am a little anxious about performing a BIOS flash because if it were to go wrong I'd be left with an expensive paper-weight, wouldn't I? What's your experience with upgrading BIOSs?

The program that performs the flash is advertised as being able to be run straight from Windows (and it will shut down, reboot, flash, then reboot for you) or from a bootable pure DOS disk. Are there advantages to the latter technique? I've heard people say that it's safer, but I can't really see why.

Many thanks for any help Smile | :)

Will.

“Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue” -- David Brent

Dan Neely3-Jan-07 4:54

Dan Neely

3-Jan-07 4:54

I've never had a problem doing a bios flash. the only advantage of a floppy flash is that youdon't run te risk of if failing due to a BSOD elsewhere in the system, from win2k forward that isn't a major concern although I would recommend closing all your existing apps first.

For a desktop you can generally get the mobo maker to send a replacement chip for a small ($10ish) fee/deposit. for a laptop though I suspect you may have to send it back to the manufacturer.

--
Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.

kasik3-Jan-07 5:38

3-Jan-07 5:38

Thanks for the reply,

dan neely wrote:
For a desktop you can generally get the mobo maker to send a replacement chip for a small ($10ish) fee/deposit. for a laptop though I suspect you may have to send it back to the manufacturer.

My laptop's quite a long while out of warranty which is worrying. Hmm I guess I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and just do it Sigh | :sigh:

Thanks again,
Will

“Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue” -- David Brent

Dave Kreskowiak3-Jan-07 5:18

3-Jan-07 5:18

Doing in under Windows is no safer than doing it from a DOS-based boot floppy. I've had BIOS upgrades fail in both cases... and in both cases, it required sending the motherboard back to be replaced. Once a BIOS upgrade fails, chances are your machine will never startup again. As a matter of fact, there's a machine (Dell Optiplex GX260) sitting next to my desk right now that I have to get a new motherboard for because the BIOS upgrade hung for about 2 hours and I finally had to turn the machine off. She didn't startup back up, no POST, no nothing...

If you're going to do a laptop, power the machine completely off, don't hibernate, sleep, soft reboot, shut it down. You want the machine to startup from a powered off condition. Attach it to AC power and make sure the machine is charging the battery. Some BIOS upgrade apps won't do the upgrade if the machine is running on battery power.

Turn the machine on and boot it from the upgrade floppy and continue as per the instructions. Or, if your doing it from Windows, login to the machine, but right after you type your password and hit Neter, hold down the Shift key to stop Windows from loading all the automatic startup junk. You want Windows to be as lean as possible and not be interrupted during the upgrade.

You can take all the precautions in the world, but that's no guarantee that the upgrade won't fail.

Dave Kreskowiak
Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic

kasik3-Jan-07 5:42

3-Jan-07 5:42

Thanks for the tips Smile | :)

Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
Attach it to AC power and make sure the machine is charging the battery.

Do you think it would be better to remove the battery and have it run purely on AC power?

Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
right after you type your password and hit Neter, hold down the Shift key to stop Windows from loading all the automatic startup junk.

I never knew you could do that - very handy Smile | :)

Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
You can take all the precautions in the world, but that's no guarantee that the upgrade won't fail.

Yeah, I guess I'm just going to have to do it hope for the best.

Thanks for all the help,
Will

“Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue” -- David Brent

Sebastian Schneider8-Jan-07 22:06

Sebastian Schneider

8-Jan-07 22:06

Will Harrower wrote:
Do you think it would be better to remove the battery and have it run purely on AC power?

Probably not a good idea. If the power fails during the flash, chances are that the laptop will keep running from the battery.

Will Harrower wrote:
Yeah, I guess I'm just going to have to do it hope for the best.

I don't believe the BIOS is the problem of your recurring start-up trouble.

If it was, the boot sequence should fail every time.

We have had this happen with prematurely released "stable" version of several bootmanagers (including both Commercial- and OS-Software): They would accidentally kill the "active"-flag of the Windows partition during startup.

Does the computer boot from a CD if the CD is the primary boot device? If so, try UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD). Does the device exist? If so, try examining the partition table for any oddities.

One other thing: Try reading the HDD's SMART-status (with smartmontools, for example) and see if there are any errors after on of the freezes. The Community is pretty helpful in interpreting the results.

Cheers,
Sebastian

--
Contra vim mortem non est medicamen in hortem.

kasik10-Jan-07 4:21

10-Jan-07 4:21

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions, I shall look into them soon (I'm a bit busy at the moment with a big coursework project).

Sebastian Schneider wrote:
Probably not a good idea. If the power fails during the flash, chances are that the laptop will keep running from the battery.

Very good point, I shall charge it and leave it in.

Sebastian Schneider wrote:
I don't believe the BIOS is the problem of your recurring start-up trouble.
If it was, the boot sequence should fail every time.

Really? I did some research into the issue, before I came to the conclusion it was my BIOS, and found this PDF[^] which talks about the introduction of 48bit addressing support in ATA-6. On page 6 in the "Solutions exist!" section:

Solutions exist!
Most motherboards have built-in connectors for the hard drive and CD-ROM drives. 40-pin ribbon cables connect the drives to the motherboard. These motherboard connectors are often labeled IDE Channel 0 and Channel 1. They are also called Primary Port and Secondary Port. Both are the same. The system BIOS auto-detects the hard disc drive and issues an inquiry to get the drive's number of LBAs. The largest number it is prepared to receive may be 137GB. In this case you might check with your system manufacturer for a BIOS upgrade. Many namebrand systems have the ability to "flash" the BIOS with new firmware.

This is what my BIOS is doing. It's reading the size of the hard drive as 137GB exactly. Also from the same page of the pdf:

Solutions exist!
Without proper support, writing or saving data past the boundary line will wrap around to the front of the file system and overwrite all of your file system information, effectively erasing your drive.

This is the part that made me think it's the problem I'm having - I exceed the 137GB limit and end up writing data over the MBR, etc.

Please say so if you still think I'm wrong about this, but to me it looks like this is the issue I'm having

Many thanks,
Will.

“Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue” -- David Brent

ed^nrgc5-Jan-07 6:30

ed^nrgc

5-Jan-07 6:30

Most vendors supply a utility for the bios updates. I've flash updated many boards without incident. Even if things go bad, there is a jumper on the board that will let you reset it to it's original state.

Dave Kreskowiak5-Jan-07 6:54

Question for those that build their on PC's

5-Jan-07 6:54

ednrgc wrote:
Even if things go bad, there is a jumper on the board that will let you reset it to it's original state

Tell that to Dell. They don't have dual BIOS support on their desktop machines, at least the ones I've had my hands on. The servers are different story though.

Dave Kreskowiak
Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic

Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr.2-Jan-07 13:49

Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr.

2-Jan-07 13:49

I have built my own back in August and while toying with the Asus supplied monitoring tools and running a multithreaded app of mine I pegged both CPU's at 100% and the temp quickly reached 149F setting off the alarm. My question is, does anyone know the danger temperature on a Pentium D 3.2ghz? (It idles at 103F)

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage

Still learning how to code

Still learning how to code3-Jan-07 2:55

3-Jan-07 2:55

I wouldn't worry about the danger level for your CPU's, just check ASAP whether the heatsink is properly in contact with the chips !!!!!!!

Doug

Dan Neely3-Jan-07 3:27

Dan Neely

3-Jan-07 3:27

That's on the hot side for stock clocking, but is probably just that the PrescHot chips run really hot. I'd guess your mobo has it's warning set conservatively for older cooler chips. If you're pegging at 100% load regularly a larger aftermarket heatsink would probably be a good investment, but otherwise I wouldn't worry.

--
Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.

ed^nrgc3-Jan-07 3:57

ed^nrgc

3-Jan-07 3:57

Pentiums are known to run very hot. Especially the newer ones.

How to make a folder level security with WinXP LAN

#realJSOP9-Jan-07 0:15

#realJSOP

9-Jan-07 0:15

1) make sure your heatsinks are properly seated (and while you have them off the CPU, use Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound (remember, don't use too much).

2) Since you're taking the HSF off to check it anyway, I'd get something a bit beefier. If you have the room in your case, check out the Scythe heat sinks that accept a 120mm fan. They rock.

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

GSM Modem readiness

Dr Dan31-Dec-06 1:34

Dr Dan

31-Dec-06 1:34

Hi,

I've written a small command line program to send AT modem commands to a USB-connected GSM modem (in fact it's an old Nokia telephone). We use at work it to send SMS reports. Currently the program is still very much experimental, but has been working well. I followed Allen Denver's MSDN article "Serial Communications in Win32"

So, in my program I would open a handle to the com port to which the modem is connected. Then, I would write each of the following strings in turn, separated by a 2.5 second pause.

1) "AT+CMGF=1\x0D" to indicate SMS mode.
2) "AT+CMGS=\"+44NNNNNNNNNN\"\x0D" to indicated the destination phone number.
3) "SMS Text\x1A\x0D" to indicate the text to send in the message and terminate the message.

Each of these strings is written to the previous file handle within a function I wrote and the return value from this function indicates the success or not of writing the string.

I'm not very experienced in serial comms programming. My question is, how do you tell in code that the modem is ready for input? For example, in HyperTerminal you get the "OK" prompt back. Is this just a feature of HyperTerminal? Am I already doing enough by checking that the string was written successfully? What is the "proper" thing to do after writing the string to the com port to check that the modem is ready for more input?

I am using C++ to write the program under Windows 2000 and XP.

Thanks in advance.

Re: GSM Modem readiness

Trollslayer1-Jan-07 10:56

Trollslayer

1-Jan-07 10:56

The 'OK' is part of the modem protocol, it's nothing to do with HyperTerminal.

Elaine Rose | [Rose]

The tigress is here Big Grin | :-D

mwith28-Dec-06 2:51

mwith

28-Dec-06 2:51

Hi all,

I have a LAN with a workgroup. Can I share a folder with password protected. I think I did this with win98 long time ago. But I couldn't with XP

Can anybody help me? Rose | [Rose]

Re: How to make a folder level security with WinXP LAN

Dave Kreskowiak28-Dec-06 3:32