vulcan nerve pinch

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

<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)

The Jargon File

[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.