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Article #4642Re: Turning the thing off (was Re: BESM-6
From: lovs... Lennart Lovstrand
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 1990 00:46
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 1990 00:46
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2144 bytes
In article <1990Sep26.1...@cbnewsi.att.com> n...@cbnewsi.att.com (nickolas.landsberg) writes: > Once upon a time, on a Unix machine manufactured in Europe, > I found out the hard way that there was a command in /etc > named "off." You guessed it, it powered the machine down. > The only thing that still has me puzzled is that there was > also a command in /etc called "on." > > Nick Landsberg Hmm, I just came across the PSION MC400, an innovative laptop made in the UK. It's a nice little box with your usual set of applications: gui, word processor, calendar, database, alarm, etc. But it also has some unusual features, such as touch pad [instead of mouse], ram cards, optional voice recorder, fax modem, remote file system, etc. All for about 800 pounds. Anyways, it also comes with its own variant of BASIC, called OPL. This language supports the command "off", which takes an optional integer argument. Yes, you guessed it -- it's the time the machine should turn itself off for. So you can write a program that turns the machine off for a specified period of time -- to save the batteries -- then wakes itself up again and starts beeping or whatever. Now, if I only could make it compute the Mandelbrot set or something else useful while it is off... ;-) -- --Lennart <Lovs...@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM> R _A _ N_ K Rank Xerox EuroPARC, 61 Regent St, Cambridge, UK \/ |_ |_) | | \/ Zany, Sun-4/60 at EuroPARC, SunOS Release 4(0.3c)-3 /\ |_ | \ |_| /\ TOPS-20 Command processor 7(73)-23 [alpha] E u r o P A R C
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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!arisia!roo!lovstran From: lovs...@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM (Lennart Lovstrand) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Turning the thing off (was Re: BESM-6 Message-ID: <546@roo.UUCP> Date: 29 Sep 90 00:46:01 GMT References: <3289@mindlink.UUCP> <1990Sep26.154217.12343@cbnewsi.att.com> Sender: ne...@parc.xerox.com Organization: Rank Xerox EuroPARC, Cambridge, UK Lines: 31 Posted: Sat Sep 29 01:46:01 1990 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit