Can anyone think of one good use for the "scroll" key?

Scroll lock is from back in the DOS days, and also still works in Linux. Back before there were screen editors (think MSDOS EDIT or even notepad would be considered a screen editor, linux think vi or nano). Often times you would have a huge file needing reading. that was done via a command called type

C:\> type config.sys <cr>

Well when the files were huge they would just keep scrolling right ? Well then (finally in like DOS 5.0 i think it first appeared) you could do

C:\> type config.sys | more

which would page list the file. But before that what were you supposed to do ? Well Scroll Lock would stop the screen from scrolling (hence the LOCK part).

Scroll lock is a key (often with an associated status light) on most modern computer keyboards. The key is not frequently used.

The scroll lock key was meant to lock all scrolling techniques, and is a remnant from the original IBM PC keyboard, though it is no longer used by almost any software.

Read more from my source..

Much before you started using computers, scroll lock was used to deactivate any scrolling modes for IBM-PC. It is just carried over now. Today no one uses scroll lock with the exception of microsoft excel and may be some other programs... But by large the scroll keys use is now obsolete with the excpetion of few programs like excel.

I found a use for it once on some DOS application years and years ago... and it did just what it said on the tin, it stopped the screen from scrolling.

I think it was some IBM terminal emulation package, but it was somewhere like 20 years ago.

Looking at Wikipedia, Excel uses it... it makes the up/down arrows scroll the window contents and not the active box.

<yawn yawn, so valuable a function... I guess it fills a hole in the keyboard layout now and not much else>

Today, the scroll lock key is used by many KVMs as well to switch between computers. But there is little software that needs it anymore.