Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald
From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Turning off NumLock through softwar
Message-ID: <110200029@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 12 Nov 89 01:32:29 GMT
References: <3932@ur-cc.UUCP>
Lines: 43
Nf-ID: #R:ur-cc.UUCP:3932:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:110200029:000:1072
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Nov 11 10:04:00 1989



>> Yes, it really is only a half a line of uuencoded code. But just
>> think - it will take up a whole big kilobyte or more on
>> your disk!
>> 
>> begin 0666 numx.com
>> 0ZP&0N   CL F@"87!-_-(&H!
>>  
>> end

>  i hate to sound dumb, and I really do know a lot about PC's, but what is
>uuencoded?  How do I type it into my PC?  I'd really like to have this tidebit
>as my NEC powermate does the same thing and it's really annoying because I
>still forget every time.

OK, here it is (well, this one is a little smaller!):


cseg	segment para public 'code'
	org	100h
NUMX	proc far
	assume cs:cseg,ds:cseg	
	xor     ax,ax		
	mov	es,ax
        and     byte ptr es:[0417h],0dfh
	int	020h
NUMX	endp
cseg	ends
end	NUMX

Masm it, link, and exe2bin it.

Here it is in hex - type it into Debug and save it:

33 C0 8E C0 26 80 26 17 04 DF CD 20

I too find it extremely off that the boot procedure would turn on the
num lock key - it didn't use too.

The interesting question is, why does it work? How does the light
bulb know that I changed a single bit in memory?
Doug MCDonald