{"podcast":{"title":"Advent of Computing","slug":"advent-of-computing-497186","podcast_index_feed_id":497186,"rss_url":"https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"http://adventofcomputing.com/","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/4/e/2/5/4e25bc8089f88907/logo5.png","author":"Sean S Haas","episode_count":199,"summary":"Welcome to Advent of Computing, the show that talks about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have rich stories behind their creation, in each episode we will learn how older tech has lead to our modern world.","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/advent-of-computing-497186"},"episode":{"title":"Episode 168 - Halt and Catch Fire","slug":"episode-168-halt-and-catch-fire","published_at":"2025-10-19T23:03:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/advent-of-computing-497186/episode-168-halt-and-catch-fire","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/advent-of-computing-497186","url":"https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-168-halt-and-catch-fire","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/adventofcomputing/ep168_halt_and_catch_fire.mp3?dest-id=1206722","summary":"Imagine a secret number that could be used to bring your computer to a screeching halt. In 1977 Gerry Wheeler discovered an interesting feature of Motorola's new 6800 microprocessor. There was a secret instruction that, if read, would cause the processor to stop working. He called this magic number Halt and Catch Fire, or HCF, and wrote a neat article about the operation. This was the first time the public would learn about the secret powers of HCF, but this isn't actually the beginning of the story. When it comes to HCF things are more complicated than that... but only a little bit!","meta_description":"Imagine a secret number that could be used to bring your computer to a screeching halt. In 1977 Gerry Wheeler discovered an interesting feature of Motorol…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1605,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/advent-of-computing-497186/episodes/episode-168-halt-and-catch-fire/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/advent-of-computing-497186/episode-168-halt-and-catch-fire.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}