terminology - What does PS stand for in PS/2?

09
2013-08
  • Questioner

    PS/2

    Anyone knows?

    • Answers
  • Michael Petrotta

    IBM Personal System 2.

    The Personal System/2 or PS/2 was IBM's third generation of personal computers. The PS/2 line, released to the public in 1987, was created by IBM in an attempt to recapture control of the PC market by introducing an advanced proprietary architecture.

    [...]

    PS/2 systems introduced a new specification for the keyboard and mouse interfaces, which are still in use today and are thus called "PS/2" interfaces.


    • Related Question

    operating systems - What is a kernel panic?
  • RCIX

    I know that this sounds like a LMGTFY question but i thought i'd ask it so that google actually turns up (more) good results. What is it?


    • Related Answers
  • John T

    A kernel panic takes place when an Operating System detects a fatal error that it cannot recover from. This is a term specific to UNIX and UNIX-like Operating Systems (Linux, OSX, etc). The Windows term is a "STOP Error", and the OS will make a memory crash dump and write to the system log files, you may even get the well known "Blue screen of death".

    The wikipedia article covers it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_panic

  • Dan Walker

    A kernel panic is when the kernel (the very base of your operating system that talks to the hardware) has a problem that it can't recover from without being restarted. Because the kernel is at such a low level, the only way to restart the kernel is to restart the entire computer.

  • hasen j

    It's the Linux (and UNIX) equivalent of the infamous BSoD (Blue Screen of Death).

    From wikipedia's Kernel Panic page:

    A kernel panic is an action taken by an operating system upon detecting an internal fatal error from which it cannot safely recover. The term is largely specific to Unix and Unix-like systems; for Microsoft Windows operating systems the equivalent term is ‘Stop error’ (or, colloquially, ‘Blue Screen of Death’).

  • nik

    Google does turn up good results -- Wikipedia Kernel Panic page