[Geek Stuff] Hexspeak - Notable magic numbers

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MaRKiV

Adept
Notable magic numbers

  • 0xABADBABE ("a bad babe") is used by Apple as the "Boot Zero Block" magic number.
  • 0xBAADF00D ("bad food") is used by Microsoft's LocalAlloc(LMEM_FIXED) to indicate uninitialised allocated heap memory.
  • 0xBADDCAFE ("bad cafe") is used by 'watchmalloc' in OpenSolaris to mark allocated but uninitialized memory.
  • 0xCAFEBABE ("cafe babe") is used by both Mach-O ("Fat binary" in both 68k and PowerPC) to identify object files and the Java programming language to identify Java bytecode class files.
  • 0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef") is used by IBM RS/6000 systems, Mac OS on 32-bit PowerPC processors and the Commodore Amiga as a magic debug value. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks freed kernel memory. On OpenVMS, running on Alpha processes DEAD_BEEF can be seen by pressing CTRL-T.
  • 0xDEFEC8ED ("defecated") is the magic number for OpenSolaris core dumps.
  • 0xFACEFEED ("face feed") is used by Alpha servers running Windows NT. The Alpha Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) generates this error when it encounters a hardware failure.
  • 0xFEE1DEAD ("feel dead") is used as magic number in Linux reboot system call.
  • 0xC0ED ("coed") is used as a magic number in the Linux mount system call.
  • 0xBADCAB1E ("bad cable") Error Code returned to the Microsoft eVC debugger when connection is severed to the debugger.
  • 0xFEEDFACE ("feed face") is used as a header for Mach-O binaries, and as an invalid pointer value for 'watchmalloc' in OpenSolaris.
  • 0xD15EA5E\0 ("disease") opens a game disc partition on the Wii video game console. (\0 is used to mark the end of a string. Also of note, it was 0xDEADBEEF on the Nintendo GameCube.)
  • 0xDEADDEAD ("dead dead") is the STOP code when invoking a Blue Screen of Death by using a special keystroke on a Windows NT based OS.
  • 0xBEADFACE ("bead face, or face bead") Is the pattern that fills all unused memory locations in the Motorola 68HCS12DP256 micro-controller simulator, SimHC12.

Man, Serious geek stuff. :S
 
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