Re: led test
On 08/21/2001 01:21:07 PM dixon wrote:
>> Vince Mulhollon wrote:
>> >
>>
>> > Uh, no. If you blink SOS, you'll have everyone who knows morse code
>> > repeatedly rebooting the thing, or disassembling it because there is a
>> > small person trapped inside trying to send a help message.
>>
>> Right. I should have mentioned that I was only going to do this for the
>> first power on test and not at any shows or anything like that. It
>> should be a fun gag though. One of the guys in hardware is going to
>> wire a smoke bomb inside.
You should leave the morse code subroutines in and modify the kernel to
output error messages via morse. You may find that very useful after
deployment when troubleshooting stuff in the field. I've always wondered
why some enterprising PC BIOS manufacturer never wrote a POST system that
output errors in morse. You'd think it would be a lot easier to interpret
dots and dashes than interpret a bunch of beeps that sound like a
hyperactive NYC cabbie crossed with a foghorn. I'd much rather hear/see a
morse code message of "Your video card is not working" or dimm or whatever,
rather than a bunch of strange beeps I have to look up in a manual. And
people that don't know morse have to look in a manual anyway, so its a no
loss situation, with some possible gain, so go for it.
Keep the smoke grenade installed. If you lease your machine or use some
sort of software subscription, you could detonate the smoke grenade unless
they pay their monthly fee. Don't let microsoft hear of this idea or it
will surely be implemented in XP. I'd be infinitely amused at a code red
varient that detonated a million smoke grenades at the same time around the
world, etc...
Don't do your smoke test in a halon equipped "dinosaur pen". I worked in a
somewhat large data center at one time, maybe a couple hundred feet on a
side, and they claimed the cost of the halon for one halon dump was more
than my yearly salary... tape drives don't like smoke either.
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