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Straight Dope Staff Report: What's the "Scroll Lock" key on my computer for? (1449 words) |
 | The Scroll Lock key has appeared on the keyboards of IBM personal computers since the original 83-key PC/XT and the 84-key AT layouts, and remains on the 101-key and greater "enhanced" keyboards currently in use. |
| IBM evidently included this key to facilitate task switching in future operating systems that is, to allow either switching from one task to another (as on a mainframe computer), or interrupting all tasks and returning control to the keyboard. |
| The Pause/Break key was used in the DOS command line environment to pause scrolling of text on the screen, which could, depending on the program and its method of text output to the screen, have the effect of pausing program execution. |
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