Blue Screen of Death (was: Computer haiku)

[Drew Danielson]

I posted the computer haiku message on a public b-board here at CMU, and
somehow it quickly generated an discussion about the coinage of "Blue
Screen of Death".

I seem to remember hearing "Blue Screen of Death" before '97 even, but I
have no idea the exact context.  Can someone help with a source and date
for this term?  Eric Randolph's Jargon File also cites the 1998 Salon
article as a precedent to popular usage of the phrase, but the second
kid 1997 cites pan out...

Can anyone else go any earlier than these citations??

Thanks,
Drew


Gopi D Flaherty wrote:
>
> On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Jason Weill wrote:
> > Stolen from Salon's "21st Century Challenge", back in 1998, which
> > challenged people to come up with haiku error messages for computers.
> > This is the place where the term "Blue Screen of Death" was first coined.
> >
> > http://www.salon.com/21st/chal/1998/02/10chal2.html
>
> From about 5 minutes with altavista:
> http://homepage.eurobell.co.uk/sgarlick/irchelp/floods.htm
> Last-Modified: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 21:49:56 GMT
>
> http://www.lorenjones.com/lawnet97/os_choices.html
> Last-Modified: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 16:12:33 GMT
>
> ...and many more.
>
> Sorry, Salon doesn't have the honor of having invented that term in '98.
> It was well established in '97.
> (I mainly looked this up because I was sure I'd heard BSOD used before
> '98, and wanted to check my memory)
>
> gopi.


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