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i always wanted to know whats the BREAk key in the keyboard for??

Habari wrote:i always wanted to know whats the BREAk key in the keyboard for??

Stop reading NOW unless you want a lesson in ancient computer history. You have been warned...

On old serial terminals, it was common to send a BREAK signal to interrupt a running program. So many old terminals had a BREAK key just for that purpose. When PC's came out, they kept mostly the same keys as the old terminals (though they don't work in exactly the same way).

The "Sys Rq" (System Request) key is another such holdover, which has been claimed by some operating systems for their own use (Linux, for example, allows you to unmount filesystems and halt the system by special SysRq sequences)

In the old NCR ITR 9000 unix based if you press break on the operator console the whole system will shutdown

also some "very" DOS based programs accepted break as a break key in the sequence

Also under Windows 98 you could use Alt-Ctrl-Break to susp[end some operations


On this days is like the apendix (is there but no use) heh, well no use what I know

The break key does have a modern use too.

These days computers tend to boot through the POST screen and other informative screens before the boot loader really fast.

The next time you boot your (PC standard compilant) computer, press pause/break at some point early on. It will freeze the computer. Ctrl-pause/break will release it. I actually use this a lot when diagnosing computers (it's otherwise impossible to see the IRQ assignations these days with the booting speed of the computer and slow mode switching of flat displays).

Such job control is still popular in terminals.There are still alot of old terminal compatibilities left - for example on Linux open the console (tty not pts - ctrl+alt+f2 should work), then type login all caps and press enter and turn off caps and type normally.

Regards.