Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

◄Note►
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                        MODE (Set Device Code Pages)
 
Prepares, selects, refreshes, or displays the numbers of the character sets
(code pages) for parallel printers or the keyboard and monitor. For an
introduction to using character sets, see "Customizing for International
Use" in the MS-DOS User's Guide.
 
Syntax
 
    MODE device CODEPAGE PREPARE=((yyy [...]) [drive:][path]filename)
 
    MODE device CODEPAGE SELECT=yyy
 
    MODE device CODEPAGE REFRESH
 
    MODE device CODEPAGE [/STATUS]
 
Parameters
 
device
    Specifies the device for which you want to prepare or select a character
    set. Valid names for device are CON, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, and PRN.
 
CODEPAGE PREPARE
    Prepares character sets for the specified device. You must prepare a
    character set for a device before you can use the character set with
    that device. After you use the CODEPAGE PREPARE form of the MODE
    command, use the CODEPAGE SELECT form of MODE to specify the character
    set you want to use. You can abbreviate CODEPAGE as CP and PREPARE as
    PREP.
 
yyy
    Specifies the number of the character set to prepare or select. The
    following list shows each character set supported by the EGA.CPI file
    and its country or language:
 
    437    United States
 
    850    Multilingual (Latin I)
 
    852    Slavic (Latin II)
 
    860    Portuguese
 
    863    Canadian-French
 
    865    Nordic
 
    Additional character sets are supported by the EGA2.CPI and EGA3.CPI
    files. For more information, see the COUNTRY.TXT file.
 
[drive:][path]filename
    Specifies the location and name of the code-page-information (.CPI) file
    that MS-DOS uses to prepare a character set for the specified device.
 
CODEPAGE SELECT
    Specifies (selects) which character set to use with the specified
    device. Before selecting a character set, you must use the CODEPAGE
    PREPARE form of the MODE command to prepare a character set. You can
    abbreviate CODEPAGE as CP and SELECT as SEL.
 
CODEPAGE REFRESH
    Reinstates the prepared character sets if they are lost as the result of
    a hardware problem or other error. You can abbreviate CODEPAGE as CP and
    REFRESH as REF.
 
CODEPAGE
    Displays the numbers of the character sets, if any, that are prepared or
    selected for the specified device.
 
Switch
 
/STATUS
    Displays the numbers of the current character sets prepared or selected
    for the specified device. You can abbreviate this switch as /STA.
    Whether or not you specify the /STATUS switch, typing the MODE command
    with a device name and the CODEPAGE parameter displays the numbers of
    the character sets that are prepared or selected for the specified
    device.
 
Related Commands
 
For information about other character-set commands, see the <NLSFUNC> and
<CHCP> commands.
 
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