vulcan nerve pinch

2 definitions found

vulcan nerve pinch - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  Vulcan nerve pinch
  three-finger salute
  
     <jargon> (Or "three-finger salute", Vulcan death grip; from
     the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga
     hackers) The keyboard combination that forces a soft boot
     or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a
     feature).
  
     On an Amiga this is done with Ctrl/Right Amiga/Left Amiga; on
     IBM PCs and many microcomputers it is Ctrl/Alt/Del; on
     Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is <Cmd>-<Power
     switch>!  Silicon Graphics users are obviously the most
     dextrous however, as these machines use the five-finger
     combination: Left Shift/Left Ctrl/Left Alt/Keypad Divide/F12.
  
     Compare quadruple bucky.
  
     [Jargon File]
  
     (2000-04-04)
  

vulcan nerve pinch - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  Vulcan nerve pinch
   n.
  
     [from the old Star Trek TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The
     keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor
     (on machines that support such a feature). On Amigas this is
     <Ctrl>-<Left-Amiga>-<Right-Amiga>; on PC clones this is Ctrl-Alt-Del;
     on Suns, L1-A; on Macintoshes, it is <Cmd>-<Power switch> or
     <Cmd>-<Ctrl>-<Power>! On IRIX,
     <Left-Ctrl><Left-Shift><F12><Keypad-Slash>, which kills and restarts
     the X server, is sometimes called a vulcan nerve pinch. Also called
     three-finger salute and Vulcan death grip. At shops with a lot of
     Microsoft Windows machines, this is often called the Microsoft
     Maneuver because of the distressing frequency with which Microsoft's
     unreliable software requires it. Compare quadruple bucky.