4 ms·
This reminds me of using NUM LOCK to see if your CPU was responding to the A20 interrupt.
by RyJones 7y ago
This reminds me of using NUM LOCK to see if your CPU was responding to the A20 interrupt.
- UI_at_80x24 7y agoAre you telling me that's not the correct way to find out? All these years I've been wrong!
- RyJones 7y agoNot at all! If it works, do it!
- Sharlin 7y agoIsn’t the use of the lock buttons, like, the standard way to test whether the OS/hardware still responds to something or if it’s reboot time?
- RyJones 7y agoThey’re soft now. It might indicate your usb driver is wedged, not if your CPU is responding to interrupts at all. This is a problem for NTP developers - finding real serial ports on modern hardware
- toast0 7y agoThe keyboard lights have always been soft. There are certainly more layers now between a keyboard and an os though.
- myself248 7y agoThe softness is precisely what made them a useful check, though. Tapping num lock has two important properties: Nothing should ever be blocking that process, and it's harmless to do and should never really affect what's happening.
- glenneroo 7y agoAnd this reminds me of when I accidentally figured out playing MOD sound files in DOS 6 with a new and especially beautiful STM/MOD player at the time would sound considerably better from my 486's PC speaker if I pressed the pause/break key to literally lock up the system. Apparently the player would buffer enough of the song that even though everything froze up, the sound would continue playing. I couldn't afford a dedicated Soundblaster/Gravis sound card but I still pined to hear all the amazing music coming out from the demo scene. The quality of course wasn't comparable to a dedicated soundcard but it was still a huge improvement over the typical beeps/bloops of the built-in PC speaker.
- core-questions 7y agoOoh, which MOD player? I was partial to Cubic Player, and before that VP (Visual Player), which was the first place I ever saw an oscilloscope. 4 channels realtime audio + 5 osc's on a 286 out the PC speaker. Phenomenal. Sounded like shit until I got a Sound Blaster, though....
- myself248 7y agoGalaxy 2.12 (glx212.zip) is my favorite for pre-386 machines. It'll do remarkable things with a covox or even pc speaker, and realtime FFT (not faux bouncing bars, either!) to boot!