Going shopping for a BSOD? We've found 'em in store at M&S Every time the BSOD flood seems to taper off, yet another bunch arrive in the Vulture South inbox, and for some reason the latest crop seems to have a retail theme. reader "Ozzard", for example, fired in the BSOD below, spotted in a Marks & Spencer, and since it's the right shape for the top spot, here it is. BSOD at Marks …
Yep, one can see the bottom line reads SYSLINUX, which is a boot-loader for floppies, CD-ROMs and PXE.
The photo shows mention of a 2004MB (WOW!!) disk drive on the secondary IDE controller… and mention of both USB 1.1 and 2.0 … so me thinks this is a 2003-2004 era PC in the throws of initially booting up.
"computer performing power on self test" then "computer now booting from operating system" in a mobile-phone grade voice. Given that's all it ever said it was actually a rather pointless feature.
Yep, had a P4 motherboard with that feature… it'd chatter away first reporting "No IDE Hard Drives Detected!" … well duh… it inherited the SCSI drives from the blown up dual P-Pro it replaced!
Ah yes, the same one that in the right circumstances could produce the classic "Keyboard not found... press F1 to continue" and just sit there ad-nauseum whilst you went off hunting for a suitable one (especially given in some cases the machine hadn't got around to loading the USB drivers yet either thus requiring a PS1 beast).
It was "Strike F1 to continue ..." thus inspiring the (marginally later) variant:
"User error ... Strike user to continue"
which the marketing droids insisted we remove from our software. I am sure it cut down on the support calls, and I seriously doubt it affected sales.
Re Timex Sinclair 1000 in a shop window.
I've never understood why shopkeepers display things that they aren't prepared to sell. 'Ooh sorry, you can't have that, it's on display.' If they want to just display stuff they should open an art gallery.
I've frequently sent members of staff from my friendly-neighbourhood comic shop (Hi Worlds Apart!) into the window display to get the last copy of 'Captain Neutron and The Star Wranglers'. They seem to have a grasp on how a retail store makes money.
Surely that's working as it should.
No it is not ... it should install the updates, restart any software that needs restarting and only ever reboot if the kernel was updated, like civilized OS' do, the most civilized OS out there does not even need to reboot to switch kernels... With Windows it is 30 minute waits for installation, 4 reboots, and another 30 minutes wait for configuration ... by no means something I call working as it should. ... if you do, what are you doing in the industry ? If MS were in the F1 industry taking two minutes to change the tires on a F1 car during a race you would understand ... in Linux, the TITSUP after an update lasts mere millis, restarting the software compare that to one hour on Windows ... and that it is your lucky and it does not bail out during installation or configuration ...
I haven't found many reasons to go to Swindon, but there is one: its Computer Museum. If I recall correctly, they may have days where you can actually use the kit they still have working (not sure, but you can always ask).
I donated a couple of rare items myself and I still have an pretty near pristine condition Roland A3 flatbed plotter in a box that I need to take along the next time I go there (it's too heavy to ship :) ).
This November I ended up at a Halloween Party with the Curator of that very museum.
Me(Death) and him (Shrek) had a very interesting chat about computing and programming before the wailing of the ladies who had found SingStar made conversation difficult.
Got an invite to a BTS tour when I can round up my Nieces and Nephews to go and see it next time i'm down that way.
Is a hotbed of BSODs. I see at least one a month.
Ive never got a camera handy though.
Ive seen some awesome errors on that massive advertising board as well.
South West Trains departure boards often produce interesting errors as well. Specifically blurting out the serial configuration for the display panels.
I kind of liked it. A whole bunch of screens in the (old) Bangkok airport whining about detected duplicate IP addresses. Makes you wonder...
I must have the picture somewhere, but where?
P.S. I must admit that I was too rather shocked to see a BIOS POST screen called a "BSOD" here on El Reg. Guess that it's no longer so much a tech site :-/
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