> When I did my Linux parallel port driver rewrite some years ago, the
> original author had put a comment something like "/* unknown error;
> on fire? */ under a conditional. I liked it so much I turned it into
> an error message (for better or worse...) that said "lp on fire".
> I had never seen that error message in any other unix (at the time,
> I had only used BSD on a VAX and SunOS, none of the machines I used
> *had* an lp device, and I wasn't the sysadmin anyway).
>
> Just out of curiousity, can you name any of those older unices with
> the same error message?
Not a UNIX, but a CPU with a similar thing. One of the first versions
of a CPU, I think it was the Z80, had a debugging instruction left in
the instruction set that would toggle the voltage levels on one pin
as fast as possible. This turned out to be let lethal to the electronics
and so the instruction was named "Halt and catch fire".
Can't even remember where I got this story from or if it's a urban legend
of the computer bussines, so just take it for your personal amusement,
Ralf