4 ms·

An old programming meme is the "Halt-and-Catch-Fire" bug. It turns out that this is a real bug. The X11 system used to require knowledge of monitor characteris

by daly 9y ago

An old programming meme is the "Halt-and-Catch-Fire" bug. It turns out that this is a real bug. The X11 system used to require knowledge of monitor characteristics in order to install it. So you had to know things about the clock rates, flyback time, etc. to use a monitor. There were many X11 threads about finding the settings for a new monitor since the manufacturers were not very forthcoming with them. A bad setting for these monitor parameters would cause the monitor to overheat and potentially catch fire. On another thread, the Pentium processor had the 'FOOF' bug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_F00F_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_F00F_bug). A user-level, non-priv instruction 'F00F' (in hex) would cause the processor to halt. It was normal to send someone an executable that contained that instruction just to force them to reboot their system. So some dimwit (umm, me?) decided that deliberately setting the X11 params incorrectly followed by F00F would essentially cause the system to "Halt-and-Catch-Fire". Fortunately we unplugged the monitor before it got too hot.

DrScump 9y ago
An old programming meme is the "Halt-and-Catch-Fire" bug. Entire lists[0] of would-be instruction sets were circulated; HCF was a common one. [0] https://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=36570.0 https://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=36570.0
pjmlp 9y ago
> The X11 system used to require knowledge of monitor characteristics in order to install it. So you had to know things about the clock rates, flyback time, etc. to use a monitor. There were many X11 threads about finding the settings for a new monitor since the manufacturers were not very forthcoming with them. Oh boy, I remember those days playing around with xfconfig and hoping for the best. When I got Slackware 2.0, my card was a Trident that could only do 640x480 by default, anything higher required playing with that configuration.
- frik 9y ago
  I remember an early Linux from around 1999, had to dig around xfconfig as well. The book I used as guide had scary all uppercase letters mentioning be extra careful. And getting sound and modem working took me several days. Especially the WinModem caused troubles, as basically major parts of the modem functionality sat in the Windows modem driver, so getting it to work on Linux was not funny - but I got it working.

by daly 9y ago

DrScump 9y ago

An old programming meme is the "Halt-and-Catch-Fire" bug. Entire lists[0] of would-be instruction sets were circulated; HCF was a common one. [0] https://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=36570.0 https://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=36570.0

pjmlp 9y ago

> The X11 system used to require knowledge of monitor characteristics in order to install it. So you had to know things about the clock rates, flyback time, etc. to use a monitor. There were many X11 threads about finding the settings for a new monitor since the manufacturers were not very forthcoming with them. Oh boy, I remember those days playing around with xfconfig and hoping for the best. When I got Slackware 2.0, my card was a Trident that could only do 640x480 by default, anything higher required playing with that configuration.

frik 9y ago
I remember an early Linux from around 1999, had to dig around xfconfig as well. The book I used as guide had scary all uppercase letters mentioning be extra careful. And getting sound and modem working took me several days. Especially the WinModem caused troubles, as basically major parts of the modem functionality sat in the Windows modem driver, so getting it to work on Linux was not funny - but I got it working.