I'd get this with the NeXTs - "My computer's hung"
Okay, I hit CTRL-|  and get the console screen.

That's hard without being the hardware manufacturer.
OTOH, if you take the action to make the screen "pretty"
you can reboot with "boot -v" and see everything.

Key being that it would be nice to have a choice.

Quoting Herb Peyerl (hpeyerl@beer.org):
> Chuck Yerkes <chuck+nbsd@snew.com>  wrote:
>  > I do rather like the RedHat boot up sequence so far that each
>  > startup script emits an optionally green OK or red FAILED.
>  > It's fairly clear to the clueless.
> 
> The first time I saw this was on HPUX 5+ years ago.  I hated it 
> then because users would call and say "my computer's hung" and
> when I got there, it'd be stuck at starting sendmail or something
> but you had no idea what was really going on...  I was never an
> accomplished hpux admin so I don't know if there was some magic
> keystroke that would tell you, or give you some way to interrupt
> it other than resetting it...  
> 
> Anyway, give me information. I want information.  My users shouldn't
> be seeing the machine boot anyway. If they are, then there's something
> else wrong.