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Panicking In Morse Code

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the dit-dit-dit-dot-dot-dot-dit-dit-dit dept.

An anonymous reader writes "When an i386 running Linux panics, a function in the kernel called 'panic_blink' causes the system's LEDs to blink. Andrew Rodland recently posted a creative patch to turn that steady blink into a useful message in morse code!"

5 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Joy... by Duckz · · Score: 4, Informative

    I managed to grab a copy!
    --
    Todd

  2. Re:I would rather have a POST code type system by GigsVT · · Score: 3, Informative

    num lock, cap lock, scroll lock

    --
    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  3. Re:Compaq beep of death by einhverfr · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most BIOS's still do that when they can't start-- you can find BIOS error codes online for most computers, though the beep codes differ between models.

    Nowadays, though, hardware is cheap enough that most people just start swapping out hardware when their computer does something other than the standard short beep on startup.

    Now if we could patch the BIOS's to give errors in Morse code...

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  4. We need Sad Mac "chimes of death"... by Etcetera · · Score: 3, Informative


    One of the (many) cool things that differentiate Macs from PC's is the way the report POST failures.

    Depending on if the video driver was sane or not yet, you'd get an infamous "San Mac" display, followed by a few codes in hex describing what was wrong. If not, you'd get POST-coded beeps.

    What was really cool were the "chimes of death". Each Mac model family had a specific sound that played when the POST test failed. These ranged from the opening to the Twilight Zone theme, to a drum crash, to the sound of glass breaking, to a full-on car crash. (You get get some of them here, but I KNOW there's a more comprehensive list with samples out there somewhere.) :/

    Ahh, memories...

    --
    Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
  5. Re:Follow Sun Cobalt model... by LinuxHam · · Score: 3, Informative

    Someone gave me a RaQ4 because his house power was too flaky and the box kept rebooting.

    Well after bringing it home and reloading it from the "network gold disk" I started using it. After a short while, the box became very slow to respond. The load had gone up to 33 (yes, the O'Reilly Performance Tuning book says the load shouldn't go over 2.0 x the CPU count -- this went up to 33 on idle). It was the damn LCD control app. Once I chmodded it to -x, the load hasn't gone over 0.02 in over a year. Of course the LCD is useless now, but its better than having the whole server useless.

    I brought it up to my friend (who was managing about 800 of the bastards at an ISP) and he replied, "oh, no wonder the damn things are so freaking slow".

    So, lately I've been reading up on the System Installation Suite so that I can setup my own tftp server-based install of Debian. If you also anticipate Sun dropping support for these bad boys, you may want to look into it too. It would be nice to have the box feel like a normal one and who knows, maybe the lcdproc isn't such a resource hog now. Maybe the market will be flooded with them once they're abandoned, and SISuite will breathe new life into them.

    --
    Intelligent Life on Earth