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Comment on Sysadmin left finger on power button for an hour to avert SAP outageparent

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This was before the introduction of ACPI, which is what makes that possible. Prior to that, switches in PCs operated more like a latching switch than a momentary switch (regardless of whether it was actually a momentary switch or not), so it was the action of releasing the button that would either send the signal to shutdown, or physically break the circuit supplying power to the computer.

This is where the old "It is now safe to shut down your computer." screens of Windows 9x/NT 3 came from. http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/286/950/e05...

Are services still running when that screen is being displayed? I'd have thought that by the time it shows up, all processes are terminated.

It's in the article. The guy pressed the power button on the wrong machine, other than the one that was shut down.

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