Microsoft KB Archive/60212

Problems Determining If Printer Is Attached ID Number: Q60212

2.x 3.00 3.10 3.20 3.21 3.22 3.30 3.30a 4.00 4.01 MS-DOS

Question:

Remove any printer cable connected to your computer. Then execute the following command:

MODE LPT1 132,8

The following message will be displayed indicating that the printer has been successfully installed:

LPT1: set for 132 Printer lines per inch set

When there is no printer present, shouldn’t a more appropriate message, such as “No printer available,” be displayed?

Response:

There is no way to determine if there actually is a printer attached to the printer port. You can put in code to test for this situation, but it won’t work 100 percent of the time. It will work sometimes, with some printer/adapter combinations, under some circumstances.

The reason you cannot detect if the printer is attached to a printer port all the time is because of a hardware problem, not a problem in MS-DOS. Most IBM (and compatible) printer adapters do not have the status lines pulled high or low. Thus, when a printer is not hooked up, the status lines will float. Depending on the card and other random factors, sometimes the lines will float high, sometimes low. If the lines float to the right state, the status will be OK even though there is no printer connected. This is true even on the newest IBM ATs. The status lines on Centronix adapters used by IBM are not pulled, the lines float, and thus take random values.

There is a way to tell if there is a printer adapter present, but not whether it has a printer connected to it. You can even try to send a character to see if you get an error; this, too, will sometimes appear to work if the status lines are floating in such a way as to make it appear that the character was received.