Shutting down cleanly ... sync; sync; sync;y

This could trash the disks on PDP11/45's and 11/70's with AT&T Unix. You see the trick with the three syncs was the time it took for the operator to type them in by hand -- each on it's own line nwith the carriage returns and fill characters for them to echo back. sync <return> sync <return> sync <return> and push the halt switch down generated enough sync's and time delays for even the older Dec controllers to flush all the buffers and then halt. (and this was at LA36 DECwriter II's at 300 baud with LA120's sync;sync;sync; ad 1200 baud was probably more risky... ). It's said one person did sync;sync;sync <carriage return> and reach over quickly and halted the front panel switch -- only to find he trashed some of the file system on the next boot. of course this depended on system speed, memory buffers amount and size and the slowness of the disks and controllers involved. Bill -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s+:+ a+ C+++ UB++++ P+ L+ E--- W++ N++ o K++ w--- O++ M+ V++ PS+ PE Y+ PGP t 5 X R- tv++ b+ DI++ D- G e++ h---- r+++ y++++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ -- "Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in a James Bond movie" - Dennis Miller || bpechter(a)shell.monmouth.com