Slashdot Mirror
The Ultimate Reset Button
Gary writes "The gigantic red switch looks more like a mushroom straight out of Super Mario. It can be connected easily using two wires and can be activated in any direction. To get rid of the blue screen of death all you have to do is hit it with something (like, a fist)."
Wow, this is just amazing....almost rivals the development of the polio vaccine.
Could I get one of these fashioned as a Colt 45 or other such instrument of death? I gotta tell ya, sometimes just beating the hell out of something doesn't leave you with the cold, hard final satisfaction that you killed something.
It's a button that is used in industry for stopping various machines
Can anyone provide a link to where one can be bought? The blog and linked source blog provide no info, not even a name to Google.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
... to buy Windows! ;)
/.'d, or perhaps they used the button on their webserver?
Page was
Thats for Windows users. Unix guys would rather like to have a pedal under their desk that is mapped to Escape. Imaging how much fun vi could be...
That site stayed up all of what... two minutes? There has to be a better way.
Is this the most blatant slashvertisement we've had yet?
I hope this can be installed on any computer! Just think, rather than coming to the network admin to take out their frustration, the users could take it out on the reset button. So much less trouble for the rest of us, with an easy frustration reliever and simple reset. Awesome!
You ever wonder if servers have thoughts and feelings? Sometimes I think it is cruel the things Slashdot does to them.
Reset button indeed. More like LITTLE BLUE LINK OF DEATH.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Since the website is already starting to die:4 8f67896ca8f/index.html
http://mirrordot.com/stories/32d28c3271b0bc44f012
Its not what it is, its something else.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
giant mushroom punches YOU!!!!
... you or someone living with you has that urge to press big shiny buttons.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
The common variety of E-Stops are locking, you want the momentary type, as said by poster, with open contacts.
I have one of those, it really is neat!
Only drawback is that my cats think it's a toy and every once in a while one of them sneaks towards it an(*#djweSHDFHf... LOST CARRIER
Google for momentary e-stop.C Y-KEY-ENCLOSURE-BOX-NEW_W0QQitemZ300116926899QQihZ 020QQcategoryZ42898QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZVi ewItem
But here is one that would do http://www.automationworld.com/view-3183, you can order momentary, locking, with proper contacts. But I agree, ebay would be best for a cheep one. Here is one on ebay with locking key so toddlers don't reset your system http://cgi.ebay.com/E-STOP-MOELLER-RPSR-S-EMERGEN
Poor thing got /.ed and dugg at the same time.
It's a BUTTON, this is not a hack, who gives a shit about a BUTTON
*looks at the big "OFF" switch on his power strip.*
I think we already had these for a couple decades, now...
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
TFA says "it uses just two wires". So how come the bottom picture shows four? (Red, yellow and two black.) Decoration?
-- Alastair
You should really add a mushroom-head pushbutton guard to this, so you don't frob it accidentally.
Looks like someone hit the Ultimate Reset Button on the webserver.
as a complement, one could put an old-school 3 phase knife-type circuit breaker on the psu, you get them pretty much as large as you can imagine.
bonus, your pc will be protected from 1000+ amp short circuits.
Use with caution, as it will shut down the internet.
Ren: See that button?
[Stimpy looks at button. He moves his hand to press the button but Ren smacks his hand away.]
Ren: Don't touch that button!! It is the history erase button, you fool!
Stimpy: What does it do?
Ren: Maybe something good, maybe something bad. We'll just never know, because you are going to guard it. You are not going to touch it, are you?
It would be more fun to make this do some arbitrary software thing. You could do this by wiring it to the power button or something (on ACPI systems under Linux, at least, it isn't hard to make that do whatever you want - just have a program watching /proc/acpi/event).
It might be fun to bind it to "skip track" and hit it hard whenever that song you meant to delete ages ago comes up.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
wow, control alt delete in one magic button!
No wait, that sucked. Why is this news? Most unintresting Slashdot news item ever.
"OMG LOOK SOMEONE HAVE HACKED TEH RESETBUTTON!11ONE!", wow, the crazy ideas, connecting a reset button between two wires! What else might they come up with?
I think http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/accessories/911 6/ would be much more impressive, if it could be set as a reset button.
I'd be a bit worried about being arrested as a terrorist, if I had one of those in a office, though...
The switch looks pretty dumb sitting on a desk. Realistically whos computer not suffering from hardware problems spontaneously crashes anymore?
Wire this sucker up in your garage instead and you have a very cool looking and very useful garage door opener. I might even replace my door bell with one. Although it would look painfully stupid outside my front door it might give the javahoas and dish network goons second thoughts about pressing my ESO.
Also if your going to bother making a computer reset switch like this I'd damn well make it useful. Instead of taking 5 minutes to wire it to the reset pins on your motherboard...
There should be a watchdog driver to go with it, if it stops sending keep-alives to the switch it should have an option to press itself. It could also light up in different colors or patterns to indicate various error conditions...
Low/No mem, something spinning the cpu, Disk I/O queue full, watchdog failure, drive timeout, network down..etc.
There should be an "enterprise" edition of the same switch only it would be ethernet based using SNMP traps and host MIBs to monitor servers and devices and then issueing reset signals to a managed RPB when pressed.
Is anyone interested in a cell phone that looks like a mineature DHD? The first 100 people who hack the neilson database in order to dramatically improve SG1's ratings get a complimentry DHD phone with lighted chevrons and big red glowing button in the center in their choice of unlocked GSM/UMTS or CDMA models.
RadioShack has some nifty "big buttons" you can buy. I found a lovely large green one there that I modded a case to use it as the power button. They also have quite the selection of smaller momentary switches in case you want something a little more child resistant. Personally, I prefer the lighted bulgin vandal switches from frozencpu.com.
One of those switches you see in movies to trigger some major event. Typically they have a molly guard, sound an alarm when the guard is opened and you have to turn two keys at once within one second and mash the button to activate it.
Now THAT would be cool. Imagine having an industrial grade alarm go off as you open the molly guard, red WARNING: RESET ACTIVATION lights coming on, and the final silence as you push the button...
Heh. I'm such a geek.
...your computer didn't have the reset switch (hardwired power supply on/off switch) due to the over engineering of it to be a software controlled power switch. That is where this button could have been really handy. Giving back the fundamental power switch so grandma doesn't have to climb under the desk to unplug the power plug.
Even better how about a clapit switch. Then everyone can applaud blue screens of death while MS use the applause are a positive sign of acceptance.
I think the buttons in the VMware management utility are big enough. A virtual machine on Linux is the only sane way to run Windows.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The big red button is too much of a temptation for my 18 mo. old child. The power button doesn't do anything if simply clicked when the computer is on, and the reset switch is this tiny innocuous button that (to him) doesn't look like it does anything. This, on the other hand, screams "PRESS ME!".
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Can sometimes put you onto the component that caused the BSOD. (It looks at the dump, that must be turned on.)
Other times it's not much use.
If you have regular bluescreens you should look into it.
In any case you'll need the reset button. But perhaps not so much in the future.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Wow, kudos for this one :
"Error executing error template."
the emergency button for when mom walks in... quickly closes the browser window and brings up a minimised screen...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
My cat would sit on it.
Clicked the link, got an SQL/DB error. It really works!
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail.as p?productID=13753&ta=detail_img&pi=Y&st=5
...that's a Press Your Luck buzzer.
"No crashes, no crashes, no crashes...STOP!!"
Crap! {{Foghorn noise}}
(Animation of Steve Ballmer throwing chair and breaking monitor, Ballmer head pops up with a {{boing}} noise)
BIG BUCKS! BIG BUCKS! No whammys! No whammys! STOP
To get a of the blue screen of death all you have to do is hit it with something. That would be a strange sort of reset.
Heh, that's one advantage I saw when playing with virtualization. I could blue-screen windows in my virtual machine and the host operating system (linux) would keep chugging away. It's a pretty good feeling when BSOD no longer requires a reboot.
We, and everybody else in the DARPA Grand Challenge, had big red EMERGENCY STOP buttons all over the vehicle. Everybody with robots of non-trivial size uses those things.
It might be fun to bind it to "skip track" and hit it hard whenever that song you meant to delete ages ago comes up.
For such things, might I recommend a Griffin Powermate? Excellent device.
Cheers,
Ian
*yawn*
then you should consider changing to a more stable operating system.
Real men don't fool around anymore with digital potentiometers and op-amps when it comes down to the nitty-gritty task of controlling an LED.
Now it's far cheaper to use a microcontroller with pulse-width modulation to guide the LED into it luministic destiny. Get an 8-pin AVR (like the Tiny11) or even a 6-pin PIC microprocessor for less than 50 cents US, preferably one that is in a new surface-mount package much smaller than the LED and fits underneath it. Then write the code that gently awakens the LED from its inner darkness. Be guided in your code by the idea that just as the LED is being raised from its inherent chaotic darkness, so too is man raised from his internal chaotic darkness by the direction and focused energy of Jesus, God, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Great Spirit, or Whoever (grammar goblins, note the proper capitalization of the indirect pronoun that refers to the deity).
The point is that now it is cheaper to effect a hardware solution with an ultra-cheap microcontroller than it was in the 20th century to do with cheap 555 timers coupled with resistors and caps or to do with TTL clusters. It does require software skills that weren't needed previously. It's a whole new frame of reference for electronic designers. This trend will continue as very fast, (50 MegaHertz system clocks, fast for microcontrollers), very powerful 32-bit microcontrollers with large internal memory continue to fall in price [the 50MHz/32K FlashROM ARM controller has broken the $5 barrier].
Will we ever use a 32-bit microprocessor to control a single LED? Don't laugh too hard. Using a chip that has more internal resources than the original IBM PC to control a few LEDs is not rare now. If some future 128-bit CPU has the ability to be programmed just by talking to it, and it's cheaper than an LED, then why not?
Can Slashdot PLEASE attempt not to be Fark? This is not what Slashdot is about, this is what Fark is about.
Slashdot used to be insightful and interesting, now it's trolling, unfunny memes and crappy blog posts used to gain Google ranks more than provide content.
I like muppets.
That's what a Molly-guard is for.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
"To get rid of the blue screen of death all you have to do is hit it with something (like, a fist)."
Wow... a big red button I might use once in the next year. They should have sold this 8 years ago.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
This could be more interesting if, say, upon a blue screen, a laser immediately shot forth from the PC and slowly aimed at your balls, 007 style.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
The problem with power is, if something accidentally gets stuck on that button, hold it down for 5 seconds and the machine is OFF. I know you can intercept a single press/release, but if you press and hold, on most boxes, it will eventually shut off no matter what you're doing.
On the last laptop I had Linux on, I played with the lid-close event. That was a bit more useful...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...the definitive windows gadget you must have.
-x- Sorry my bad English. I'll have him tarred and feathered. -x-
- ummm... malt liquor...
:-)
"Colt 45... Does it every time!"
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/home/iphonela/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/php/extlib/e zsql/ezsql_mysql.php on line 94
Error establishing a database connection!
Are you sure you have the correct user/password?
Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
Are you sure that the database server is running?
]
SQL/DB Error -- [
Error selecting database iphonela_mt!
Are you sure it exists?
Are you sure there is a valid database connection?
]
Warning: mysql_error(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in
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SQL/DB Error -- []
SQL/DB Error -- []
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Error executing error template.
I think I'd call THIS the ultimate reset button.
I couldn't.. reach.. Sporky-Dorky... Someone hit my... reset button. (50 pts and a cookie to whoever gets that reference)
Have a mouse with no buttons and instead put pedals under the desk that serve as left and right clicking...and perhaps a clutch and gear shift for scrolling.
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
This is a news article about a button. More comments after the jump.
Captain obvious was there and had this to say about it: "It's a slow news day."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frob
wouldn't this be more appropriate as a 'power off' button? isn't that the typical use of a big red panic button?
maybe rig it up to kill your ethernet so you can conveniently loose connection when getting your butt stomped in a C&C3 match!
/comic store guy
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
This must have taken him an entire "Heros" commercial break to make this.
What will be his next "hack?" Making his lights dim with a "dimmer switch?"
You have to wonder what these people do with their computers.
Our SOHO system includes a Win98 laptop, NT4 server, XP laptop, XP desktop, and a linux NAS. The Win95 machine was retired about a year ago.
According to my logs, the last crash on any machine was in 2001, and I traced that to a broken network card. Before that was in 1998 when, silly me, I installed some Corel software on the NT machine. A big red reset switch? Gimme a break.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Oh, wait...nevermind. I don't need one. I have a Mac.
Ramen
Make stop with the diggish articles
Do we really have Nothing better to post on /. today?
Maybe I should show everyone how I use a deskfan to cool my computer!?!?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Wouldn't it relieve a whole lot more if thay had put the head of certain individuals on it? And hit it the monkey-way!
Does this remind nobody else of the Easy Button?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
These are much better looking....u tton-usb-hub-188135.php t ton_v2.html
1) http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/selfdestruct-b
2) http://www.everythingusb.com/usb_self-destruct_bu
Plus, these give functionality to those of us running an OS that doesn't require resetting regularly.
Now I can invite friends over and have a reason to shout: "Don't touch it!! It's the History Eraser button you fool!!!"