54 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
54 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
blinkenlights
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/blink'@nli:tz/ , n. [common] Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer,
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esp. a dinosaur. Now that dinosaurs are rare, this term usually refers to
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status lights on a modem, network hub, or the like. This term derives from
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the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German
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that once graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking
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world. One version ran in its entirety as follows:
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ACHTUNG!ALLESLOOKENSPEEPERS! Allestouristenundnon-technischenlookenpeepers!
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Dascomputermachineistnichtfuergefingerpokenundmittengrabben.
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Isteasyschnappenderspringenwerk,blowenfusenundpoppencorken
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mitspitzensparken.Istnichtfuergewerkenbeidasdumpkopfen.
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Dasrubberneckensichtseerenkeependascotten-pickenenhansindas
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pocketsmuss;relaxenundwatchendasblinkenlichten. This silliness dates back at
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least as far as 1955 at IBM and had already gone international by the early
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1960s, when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site.
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There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do
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end with the word blinkenlights. In an amusing example of
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turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers have developed their own versions of
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the blinkenlights poster in fractured English, one of which is reproduced
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here: ATTENTION Thisroomisfullfilledmitspecialelectronischeequippment.
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Fingergrabbingandpressingthecnoeppkesfromthecomputersis
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allowedfordieexpertsonly!Soallthe lefthanders stayaway
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anddonotdisturbenthebrainstormingvonhereworking
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intelligencies.Otherwiseyouwillbeoutthrownandkicked
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anderswhere!Also:pleasekeepstillandonlywatchenastaunished theblinkenlights.
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See also geef. Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights
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because they were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel. Sadly,
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very few computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC keyboard
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certainly don't count). The obvious reasons (cost of wiring, cost of
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front-panel cutouts, almost nobody needs or wants to interpret
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machine-register states on the fly anymore) are only part of the story.
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Another part of it is that radio-frequency leakage from the lamp wiring was
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beginning to be a problem as far back as transistor machines. But the most
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fundamental fact is that there are very few signals slow enough to blink an
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LED these days! With slow CPUs, you could watch the bus register or
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instruction counter tick, but even at 33/66/150MHz (let alone gigahertz
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speeds) it's all a blur. Despite this, a couple of relatively recent
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computer designs of note have featured programmable blinkenlights that were
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added just because they looked cool. The Connection Machine, a
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65,536-processor parallel computer designed in the mid-1980s, was a black
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cube with one side covered with a grid of red blinkenlights; the sales demo
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had them evolving life patterns. A few years later the ill-fated BeBox (a
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personal computer designed to run the BeOS operating system) featured twin
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rows of blinkenlights on the case front. When Be, Inc. decided to get out of
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the hardware business in 1996 and instead ported their OS to the PowerPC and
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later to the Intel architecture, many users suffered severely from the
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absence of their beloved blinkenlights. Before long an external version of
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the blinkenlights driven by a PC serial port became available; there is some
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sort of plot symmetry in the fact that it was assembled by a German.
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Finally, a version updated for the Internet has been seen on
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news.admin.net-abuse.
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