rev 1.0

Welcome to my program.  This program was written to change the
display on an HP Laserjet 4 printer.  The standard display is
"00 READY".  This is great for most people, but if you're one of
the fun loving people, maybe you would like it to read: "Don't
Touch" or "Fred's Printer".  If you work on a LAN, an
informational message may be nice like: "RW1-PC8-HP4".  You are
limited to 16 characters, because that is all the window can
display - so keep your messages short.

How does the program work?

     The program works one of two ways:

     1 -  If you want to use it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT you may pass
          the a literal string to the program and it will process
          the string without additional prompting.  For example:

               LJ4DISP Grover Tech Inc.

          This will print "Grover Tech Inc." on your printer
          display in place of the "00 READY" that is normally
          displayed.  It will not pause or ask you to fill in
          anything.

     2 -  The program also may run in interactive mode.  For
          example:

               LJ4DISP

          This will display a prompt, asking you to fill in a
          display message (up to 16 characters).


This program was written in ANSII C using an HP4 for testing.  It
may work with other printers in the HP4 family (like the 4P, 4Si,
etc.), but it has only been tested on a plain HP4.  The source
code has been included, if you make any changes please send me an
update.  I just started writing C last week and this is my first
program in this language.  You may send your comments and changes
to my CompuServe ID:  Larry Tanner 70242,27


Last, the disclaimer: I hereby disclaim all warranties relating
to this software, whether expressed or implied, including without
limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness
for a particular purpose.  I will not be liable for any special,
incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to
loss of data or any other reason.  The person using the software
bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software. 
 
Gee, I always wanted to say that.


---------------------------------------------------------------
Revision 2.0


   rev 2.0  09/26/94

   revision by:    Jeff Steinmetz of Urge Productions
                   internet:   jeffsteinm@aol.com
                   compuserve: 74741,2006

    Note:  This is an MS-DOS enhancement.

    Added printer error routine.  Now if a printer error occurs,
    it will abort the program, instead of asking Abort, Retry, Fail.
    This will allow you to put it in your autoexec.bat file,
    and it will not pause if your printer is turned off.
    Of course it will not program your HPL4 if this is the case,
    but at least your AUTOEXEC.BAT will continue unattended.

    By adding the error handling routine, the source code is no
    longer ANSI C.  It is MS-DOS specific.