Halt and Catch Fire
<humour, processor> (HCF) Any of several undocumented and semi-mythical
machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test
purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360.
The Motorola 6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became
widely known. This instruction caused the processor to toggle a subset of the
bus lines as rapidly as it could; in some configurations this could actually
cause lines to burn up.
[Confirm?]
(1995-12-14)
Nearby terms:
HALGOL « HALMAT « Hal/S « Halt and Catch Fire
» halting problem » Hamilton » Hamiltonian cycle
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