[Info-vax] OT: Halt and Catch Fire

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On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 20:39:34 -0700
Alan Frisbie via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> On 06/02/2015 08:25 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> > Yeah, I know , "HCF, Halt and Catch Fire"  was an IBM 370 instruction in
> > many "hacked" university documents.

Does that mean somebody inserted this as a joke?

> > Seems to deal with the emergence of the PC in early 1980s
> 
> I have a ditto copy (remember ditto copies?) of an instruction list from
> the 1960s which had "Halt and Catch Fire", supposedly for the IBM S/360
> Model 69.

I don't think there was a Model 69 but Glen is older than I am and (usually)
remembers better.

Certainly there is no HCF instruction in the POPS for 360, 370, or later.
Not sure what this is about. I have not seen and not heard of an IBM
machine catching fire and they haven't had uptime problems since the mid
80s. Sounds like venus envy to me.

There were (are?) only 3 opcodes that began with H. If I recall two were
floating point. I don't remember what the third was.

> I am sure that it was copied from an even earlier list for the IBM 1620,
> but I don't have a copy.   That would have been in 1965. 

Now that very well could be. But I could not find any HCF opcode in S/360
and later doc.

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