Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site uw-beaver Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!edsel!bentley!hoxna!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!info-mac From: info-mac@uw-beaver Newsgroups: fa.info-mac Subject: (copy) Programmer's Switch vs On/Off Switch Message-ID: <299@uw-beaver> Date: Mon, 24-Dec-84 22:33:12 EST Article-I.D.: uw-beave.299 Posted: Mon Dec 24 22:33:12 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 27-Dec-84 02:19:06 EST Sender: daemon@uw-beaver Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 13 From: QP2%CORNELLA.BITNET@Berkeley There is indeed one (occasionally) important difference between rebooting with the programmers' switch and with the on/off switch. The programmers' switch does *not* zero memory. Of course, this makes no difference if everything you run is totally bug-free... We had a very bad spell before we learned this with a bit of code that trashed something the Finder uesed in dealing with disks. The result was that rebooting with the Programmers' switch and putting a good disk into the drive was guaranteed to trash the disk -- even if you never wrote to it. We use the Programmers' switch when we think things are OK and just want to boot of another disk, but shut off the power (and count to 10) if a but of our code has gone tripping through memory in strange ways. -- Paul Velleman