Panicking In Morse Code

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!"

Comments

This reminds me...

[Teknogeek]

...of Wolfenstein 3D.

If you translated the beeping in various levels of the third episode, it was a message in Morse Code telling you to defeat Hitler!

I can just imagine

[Alien54]

The variety of panic messages beyond the usual meaningful information

I can't do that dave

I'm melting ....

beam me up, scotty

feed me

I wonder if there is a morse code to voice coverter device out there? that would be a neat module to have to plug in as a peripheral

of course, if the code goes fast enough, you can gain the ability to recognise whole words as a sort of warble.

Standard for diaganostics would be better

[Rob.Mathers]

Although this is a neat and creative idea, I think that a better way to diagnose a sick computer would be a standard for a set of diagnostic LEDs or even a small LCD panel as part of the next motherboard standard.
Some manufacturers of motherboards and whole systems already do this, but it's far from standard, and is typically only useful for POST errors. A full standard would allow O/Ses, as well as the BIOS to access the output device (be it LEDs or an LCD) and display a standard code for whatever the error is, which the user could then look up in the manual, or on the web.

Here is what it says...

[kenthorvath]

Three dits!

Four dits!

Two dits!

Dah!

Windows! Windows! Rah Rah Rah!

This IS Slashdot, right?

[jcsehak]

Just checking. I can't believe no one's mentioned the part in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon where Randy "prints" out the "message" (trying to avoid a spoiler) on his laptop's LED.

Here's an LED controller program inspired by that bit in the book.

Compaq beep of death

[peterdaly]

If I didn't know better I'd say that's what Compaq's, or was it old ALRs (remember them?) did when hardware wasn't right.

A string of varying beeps. This was years ago, don't know if any recent hardware still does it.

Tech support: Hold the phone close to the system board so I can hear it.

That was funny.

-Pete

I would rather have a POST code type system

[frovingslosh]

This does seem somewhat bloated. The article claims it only adds a few hundred bytes, but isn't more specific. The encoding of the letters and numbers in Morse seems wasteful, but it can't be done by five bits in one byte the way Alan Cox suggested, since not all Morse characters are 5 symbols long. There would be space in a byte to store all of this information though if the remaining bits were used to store the number of encoded bits. But the real bloat comes in coding all of the potential panics anywhere they might occur. Overall I think I would prefer a system that simply passed a numeric panic number, much like the BIOS power on self test system beeps to inform a user of what failed. More limited, but reasonable for it's size. Or, if you think like Bill Gates and bloat isn't a promise but rather a blessing, then a nice text to speech system would let the computer say why it panicked.

As to the question of flashing the LED because Morse on the speaker might be too annoying, I say go for the speaker. Those who do know Morse know it by sound, not by individual dots and dashes, and seeing it on an LED is a very different thing than listening to it. If the system has panicked I'm already annoyed, beeping isn't going to be a problem. Just the opposite, if I'm nearby but not looking at the computer I want the beeping to get my attention to the problem.

And here's the really stupid question: What is this blinking system LED he's talking about???? I have a power LED on my PC, but it's not software controlled. Some PC's used to have a "turbo" LED, but that's been phased out. I sure hope he's not using the hard disk LED. Is he using a Keyboard LED or am I missing something really obvious here?