Ctrl-Alt-Del Inventor To Retire From IBM

wherley writes "AP reports that IBM'er David Bradley, who came up with the (in)famous Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination, is retiring. The article mentions: 'At a 20-year celebration for the IBM PC, Bradley was on a panel with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and other tech icons. The discussion turned to the keys. 'I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous,' Bradley said. Gates didn't laugh. The key combination also is used when software, such as Microsoft's Windows operating system, fails'." We featured a story on Bradley a few months back.

... then hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X.

[lunar_legacy]

And who is the inventor of Ctrl-Alt-Backspace?

NT used it for logging on.

[Rolman]

I remember Dave Cutler (the man in charge of WindowsNT, also the main VMS developer for DEC), when asked on why did MS use the CTRL-ALT-DEL keyboard combination to log on an NT machine, he said something like: "this combination is sure to be never used by any application". This was taking advantage of the tradition of using it to reboot the computer as everything in the DOS era was running in real mode, so nobody would use it for an application and the NT architecture enabled for the system to intercept it and use it in a supposedly better way. It was thought to be a neat idea.

Still, I think it was not really clever to teach the end-users such an important keyboard combination. I also remember some users back then thinking it would work the same in 95 as in NT, since both systems' GUI looked so similar.

Three keys

[Anonymous Coward]

PrtScn SysRQ
ScrLk
Pause Break

Anyone can tell me what these do???

Re:Why only that combination?

[Anonymous Coward]

It took me exactly 10 tries to non-accidentally get a succesful CTRL-ALT-DEL just now, by smacking the keyboard with an open palm. I tried to emulate the shape of a hand that would be snatching at something you wouldn't want to spill/drop, that being an open hand, fingers outstretched, with the ball of the hand being the first part of the body to touch the dropped object. This allows the fingers and thumb to wrap around the falling object immediately upon contact, especially if there is a strong tendancy of motion TOWARDS the falling object. With my hand held thusly, the ball of my hand was able to perfectly impact the CTRL key as my thumb and forefinger crash into the ALt and Delete keys.

And on attempt 10, the W2K Ctrl-Alt-Del menu appeared.

Re:Why only that combination?

[kasperd]

Then, I believe, users clamoured for more convenience, so keyboard manufacturers started duplicating the ctrl and alt keys (and/or moved the del key) so that the salute could be performed one-handed.

Actually some keyboards have gone a bit too far along that road. I have seen a keyboard, where you could do CTRL+ALT+DEL with just a single keypress. Yup, they really added an extra key to do just that. Some people must have used CTRL+ALT+DEL too much.

Lisp machines

[Anonymous Coward]

Lisp machines were using a 5-key chord for reboot way before IBM PC. The chord LCtrl-LMeta-RCtrl-RMeta-Del was used on TI-Explorer. The meta key is the alt equivalence in lisp machines.

Re:screw that - give me Mac OS X

[Hes Nikke]

(stupid preview and submit buttons being right next to each other.... *grumble*)

that prompt sucked, what needed to be installed was MacsBug [macupdate.com], then you could do all sorts of fun commands in the OS wide debugger :D

the great thing about MacsBug is that it automatically invokes itself when anything even thinks about crashing. my server (runs OS 9) has MacsBug installed along with a script that will log debug information and then restart the computer.

speaking of... that log must be getting pretty full after 4 years of this configuration...

*runs to his server to parse^H^H^H^H^H^H delete the debugger log*

Re:Salute!

[Thyrhaug]

Actually, MS DOS is very much alive. It's still used alot on install disks and similar, since it's small and not too powerfull (which often means bigger size).
Here at work we use a modyfied win98 boot disk to install a DOS ICA client, and I must say - it works like a charm.

Re:Isn't quite as fun as the Task Manager

[http]

hold on, have you used MacsBug? command-power drops you into assembly language level debugging, with symbolics, and audio cds carry on playing. then type 'Scream' to look at individual threads...

Re:NT used it for logging on.

[|DeN|niS]

Actually it is a hardware signal and unprivilidged programs have no way of intercepting it. Contrast to "type your password and hit enter" where a fake login screen could trick people. Good luck writing a fake "press ctr-alt-delete to log in" app :-)

Celebrities for Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

How can we convince the old men of IT history to commit themselves to Open Source projects? We should assume that they do not need to work any more and that they have all the time they want to spend on Free projects.

How would the world benefit from their insights and contacts?

What would motivate them?

Would a "mentor" scheme help to organise OS projects? Would it work?

Re:Why only that combination?

[Anonymous Coward]

"CTRL+SHIFT+DEL I can easily put my finger between the CTRL and Shift Key, pressing down both at the same time. Now say I accidently do that when using CTRL-DEL to do a Cut operation. Ooops I just reset my computer."

Oooops maybe you should upgrade. DOS is good, but there are newer OSes out that do not RESET when you press ctrl-alt-del or this hypothetical ctrl-shif-del.

BTW, the reason why some keyboards have single key ctrl-alt-del is because Windows NT/2K login uses that combination too, not to mention unlocking screen savers. It's not just instability of the OS or lazyness of people. It's practical.

Key combinations are for wimps

[Bigman]

I remember back in 1980 when I had my swanky new Commodore Pet 2001-8 that to reboot it (because I'd crashed it running hand-assembled machine code routines) I used a specially bent paper clip on the edge connecter ("Expansion port") that stuck out the right hand side of the machine. I'd always intended to fit a switch, even bought it.. just never got round to drilling the hole!

Re:More precisely...

[CTho9305]

it can't be handled by any input APIs (Win32/DirectInput)... it gets handled directly by the keyboard driver.

Close, but not exactly correct. It gets handled by "msgina".dll, which is loaded before logon, before anything else. msgina hooks the keyboard IO, and then traps any ctrl+alt+del presses before they reach other running programs. Modified versions of msgina.dll can be used to allow other programs to receive ctrl+alt+del presses.

This page [216.239.53.104] gives a brief explanation of how things like Novell catch ctrl+alt+del, by replacing msgina.dll.