Macintosh startup#Sad Mac

The Sad Mac (English for sad Mac) is a symbol that is used in older computers from the Apple Macintosh line to indicate an event occurring at the start of the system error, which makes the subsequent start of the system impossible.

Appearance

The symbol consists of a small representation of an early Apple Macintosh, which built-in monitor is a sad face with turned-down corners of the mouth and crossed out ( dead ) eyes. In contrast, a similar picture with a happy face is shown during a successful start. Below the Sad Mac icon is an indicator that is with the help of several hexadecimal digits shed light on the nature and cause of the error. In the first, MC68000 -based Apple Macintosh computers, the display is no sound. Later models that use the Sad Mac to play at such a fault is also a short sound or a melody. The tone sequence varies depending on the error and allows trained service technicians to draw conclusions about the type of error to; in the frequent cause of defective memory, for example on the affected memory bank.

The Sad Mac may be deliberately caused by the Interrupt key ( if the corresponding device has one) at the start is pressed, or by using the keyboard shortcut Command key power button is pressed after the startup sound.