4 ms·

I'm disappointed to find that the Atari ST character set doesn't contain a bomb symbol. Obviously two entirely different things have been confused by my childh

• bradleyjg 7y ago
  Early macs had a bomb symbol. It was what showed up for the equivalent of the BSOD.
• gmac 7y ago
  Hmm. The Atari ST did display bombs when it crashed. The number of bombs was a hint about the cause. It always felt very alarming and had me scrambling for the 'off' switch, though. http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=15500 http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=15500
• lokedhs 7y ago
  The Atari ST did display bombs when an application crashed. But it was never part of the character set. It's a graphic that is displayed by the trap handler in the operating system. The number of bombs indicate the trap type, so three bombs means trap handler 3 (address error). The symbols that do exist, but was not included in the proposal was the Atari logo and the J.R. Dobbs picture. Both of which are copyrighted, which is why they are included.
  • ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    These type of comments are why I come to Hacker News and waste so much time here. Thank you.
    • lokedhs 7y ago
      Thank you for the appreciation. The Atari ST was a very important computer for me when I was growing up, and I love talking about it.