Subject: Re: Pentium Bug may cause system crash
To: Andrew Reilly <reilly@zeta.org.au>
From: David Maxwell <david@fundy.ca>
List: current-users
Date: 11/13/1997 21:30:37
> 
> Andrew wrote:
> On 13 Nov, Peter Seebach wrote:
> >>I wonder what would happen if you had a program that legitimately had
> >>some data that just happened to match the pattern.
> > 
> > My assumption would be that the system would be smart enough to only
> > complain about executing blocks of code, but I'm not sure.
> 
> Well, the pattern is -407680 as an IEEE float, which is not an
> "unreasonable" number.  Constants used as immediate operands live in
> the .text segment, don't they?

The bug is an instruction which is not properly recognized and trapped
as invalid. The value would have no effect unless you jmp'd to that 
location in ram, any more than a text file on your hard drive could be
a virus. (Scripts/Batch files are not text files, they are script/batch
files)

							David Maxwell