A guru meditation is an error message similar to the “blue screen of death” on Windows computers, originating from the Commodore Amiga. It was created during the development of a peripheral control device called the Joyboard, and was displayed when a person’s movement was detected while sitting cross-legged on it. The error message appears on a black background with red text enclosed in a red rectangular box and shows reference codes that identify error types, structure locations, memory block addresses, or unknown crash sources. Later versions of the Amiga operating system converted error codes into text to help users understand what caused the system to crash. Guru meditation errors can also occur in WinAMP and DSOrganize.
A guru meditation is a message that appears similar to the “blue screen of death” on computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems when the computer crashes. The guru’s original meditation message was synonymous with the first Commodore Amiga personal computers. The error message can also occur when using the WinAMP application and unofficial applications running on the Nintendo DS portable gaming system.
This kind of unusually named error originated during the development of the Commodore Amiga computers. An inventive peripheral control device, known as the Joyboard, was developed in conjunction with the Amiga systems. The Joyboard worked with the player controlling on-screen actions using their feet as opposed to the more traditional joystick or joypad control method. As a way to relax, the Amiga developers invented a game in which a person sat cross-legged on the Joyboard and adopted a stereotypical Indian meditation position. Any movement detected by the Joyboard would result in an on-screen message stating that the person’s shift has ended as a “guru meditation error” has occurred.
This unwanted message is displayed on a black background with red text enclosed in a red rectangular box. If the error is easily recoverable, the text and rectangle may appear light green. The warning system was developed so that the message could be displayed even if critical system resources were fatally damaged. Guru meditation errors show reference codes in two parts separated by a dot. These reference codes identify error types, structure locations, memory block addresses, or, in the case of unknown crash sources, the 48454C50 code; this code spells the word “HELP” in American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) hexadecimal.
Later versions of the Amiga operating system expanded on the guru meditation system by converting error codes into text. This meant that users without the technical knowledge to interpret error codes previously could now see what caused the system to crash. From Amiga OS version 4.0 onwards, the user was able to select an option to end an active activity that was causing the exception. These types of errors are also known to occur when selecting some custom skins in the Microsoft Windows based media player, WinAMP, and also in the Nintendo DS organizer program, DSOrganize. When the error occurs in DSOrganize, guru meditation is usually the result of file system errors, which can be fixed using disk checking applications.
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