OT: Re: The worst error message in history belongs to... BIND9!

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

> > Favourite worst written error message in history:
> > 
> >     Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue. 
>
> I have always loved this one!! Who made that up!?

Someone at IBM.  That's what the original IBM PC, PC-AT, and
(presumably) PC-XT displayed if the keyboard was dead or not
plugged in.

It was probably a case of modular code:  any problem in POST would
display a message and return a "fail" status, and the generic code
would append "Press F1 to continue." and wait.  Not a bad idea at
all -- certainly better than blindly trying to boot the machine
without giving the operator a chance to decide what to do about
the problem -- but this particular combination does have a chicken-
egg aspect :(