halt and catch fire

1 definition found

halt and catch fire - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  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)