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HCF /H-C-F/ n.
Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', 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 MC6800 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. Compare killer poke.
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