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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.
... 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...
http://www.automationdirect.com/ is one good supplier. This kind of industrial grade hardware is expensive, so eBay might be the best choice. What you want is commonly called a "mushroom head emergency stop pushbutton". If using it for a PC reset switch, you want normally open contacts, whereas most E-stop systems would use normally closed.
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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
The webmaster is checking out his new button.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The common variety of E-Stops are locking, you want the momentary type, as said by poster, with open contacts.
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
*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.
You should really add a mushroom-head pushbutton guard to this, so you don't frob it accidentally.
I am going to hazard a guess that the two blacks are both grounds and the red and yellow are opposite signals, one for when the switch is pressed and one for when it isnt. This opens up more possible uses, since some hardware wants momentary-open for reset instead of the PC standard of momentary-close.
Looks like someone hit the Ultimate Reset Button on the webserver.
Ok ok! I joke!
Or you could find out how to automatically reboot on blue screen of death.
Use with caution, as it will shut down the internet.
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.
It's not a reset button, it's an anger management tool.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I don't know about you, but a notable portion of my day is spent responding to users' woes with "Did you try rebooting?" If users learn to reboot their own computers, that would cut the need for us admins in half. This button thingie will lead to mass unemployment. It's evil! Kill it! Kill it!
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
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.
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?
I think I'd call THIS the ultimate reset button.