Yuck, I wonder if /dev/nvram is the best approach, just to turn off a couple settings on my laptop I don't need. There's probably security turned on by default, that virus protection that will prevent a linux disk from booting, don't know how the boot sequence knows which drive, cd or floppy is in the machine, as I have to swap them out to switch what I'll use, making it really hard to install linux from cd when booting from a floppy. Is there a way I could see the cmos settings from another computer, hooked to the parallel port, or over a modem or network interface? Most tasks that I need to let run are intensive enough that I can't really do much else when I'm doing them, like downloading files or listening to streaming audio that takes up enough bandwidth it's not worth doing much else because it takes forever. Setting my machine to turn on at a certain time is another cmos exclusive that requires going in there to schedule the task to be performed at a certain time, my laptop is probably the only system I have that may support that, thought I heard about it somewhere, but can't find any settings in windows to control it, so it's probably in cmos. I may need to change things regularly to record internet shows that I like to listen to, some later at night that I don't want to wake up and turn it on, get online, and do it, once that power thing is straightened out, I'll only need access to that automatic startups for when things come on, it'd get to be a pain to have to have someone set up all my recording times so the computer starts at the right time, and shuts down when the show ends, as the same would need to be done if it were a VCR too, as no speech is available. Is it safe to just use a timer hooked to the regular computer that shuts the power off when the time is to end, and use crontab in linux to initiate the recording?
