One for Tony or other HP fetishists I suspect

*None* of my computers have "start" buttons. ;) <<<< Hmmm, for the two mainframes* that I had close enough association with to start them up * ICL1905E, Honeywell Level 66/60 ** Actually, I lie a little. The very first steps (after turning on some 3KW of room lighting) were: Check that the aircon was operational (and start it up if not) Check that the processor swirches were set to "Halt" (It should have been unless the previous shutdown was a power failure or a use of the "Red Button") NOW I could start the MG and wait for it to stabilse (a few seconds) Then power on the processor and then peripherals. (note that for todays equipment it is usually best to do it the other way round) Possibly have to load the firmware into the PF56 (the disk controller on the 1905E) Ensure the right disk packs were loaded (they normally were, but ...) and start them up (one start button each) Start up the drum (another start button) If booting from tape load the right tape (NO WPR!) on the right drive. (yet another start button!) Probably start up the comms processors (a Digico micro-16 for the 1905e; a DN355 for the Honeywell) Finally, I could press and release "boot" and let the processor "run" .... If I was testing Exec mods on the 1905E I might have to recover from mistakes in those mods. [Luckily we never had one of those huge CDC fixed disks that had to run up for HOURS after any power interruption at all.] OK, so these systems didn't have one "start" button - they had over a dozen :-) Andy