On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Kevin P. Neal wrote:

> At 10:07 AM 4/8/97 +0200, Rolf Larsson wrote:
> >People have been saying:
> >> > So, any ideas on either problem? Is 'deadbeef' supposed to be some
> >> > sort of sick twisted joke? :)
> >> 
> >> I'm afraid I can't contribute much to the discussion, but I can
> >> at least point out that "deadbeef" is Sun's standard string to
> >> insert into the kernel at a certain point in memory to keep an
> >> eye on, and determine whether that block of memory has been
> >> (wrongly) modified.
> >
> >IIRC, Sun also uses 0xcafebabe in their java classes. I have no
> >idea for what, though...
> 
> Heh.
> 
> Commodore Amiga used several tricks like this. They used "0xdeadbeef" and
> "0xc0dedbad" to help find memory errors in applications (no memory protection).
> 
This sort of thing goes back a long ways.  I remember working at a place 
in the late seventies where they ran an application that, on encountering 
some fatal error, would halt the computer with '2bad' displayed on the 
console lights.