The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Bad Cable, Anyone?

...ok, this isn't really about cables, but more about HEX fun.

When I debugged my Pocket PC app on the device via USB, the debugger disconnected and the message in the debugger output window was

BADCAB1E

Took me a few moments to figure that message out, but when I did I statred laughing insanely nerdish and my fellow nerd colleagues instantly turned at my desk.

So, anyone else seen an "real" fun HEX error messages lately? :-)

Unsygn
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Java classes (the bytecode) starts with "CAFEBABE".

How odd...

Russell Thackston
Saturday, April 17, 2004

A few I've come across

baadf00d
BeefBabe
deadbeef
feedface
deadc0de

KayJay
Saturday, April 17, 2004

DECAFBAD :)

http://www.decafbad.com/blog/

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Damn, I was hoping this was about bad cables.

I bought a new HDD yesterday and had it plugged in as the slave on my UltraATA cable but it would only work in Safe-Mode. If I tried using normal mode XP would reboot itself duing the startup process.

So this morning I replaced the cable with a crappy IDE cable I had lying around and it works perfectly. So I was looking at the UltraATA cable and noticed that about 5cm from the MB end of the cable there is a 3mm length missing from one of the leads in the cable.

So I was hoping if somebody could tell me why Windows XP would work in Safe-Mode (I could format and use the drive as normal) but not in normal mode (would reboot at startup) - to me it appears that it shouldn't have worked at all because there was physically no wire to transmit to that drive. Maybe XP increases the AMPs on the cable to jump "dead spots" in safe mode?

Chris
Saturday, April 17, 2004

No, in safe mode, Windows would run the drive in old ATA mode.

Just a guess, but you were probably just missing one of the ground wires. Your PC might have thought it was a UltraATA cable though, it does this by looking for ground on one of the pins.

Rhys Keepence
Saturday, April 17, 2004

No it definately was a UltraATA cable, but that would make sense that Windows would run in old ATA mode in Safe-Mode.

Chris
Saturday, April 17, 2004