Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org> wrote:
There is a SERIOUS bug in all pentium CPUs. The following code will crash any machine running on a pentium CPU, MMX or no MMX, any speed, regardless of OS (crash as in instant seize, hard reboot the only cure):
char x [5] = { 0xf0, 0x0f, 0xc7, 0xc8 };
main () { void (*f)() = x; f(); }
This require no special permissions to run, it works fine with average-joe-userspace permissions. I have verified this, it works. Demand a new CPU from Intel.
This didn't crash my Pentium. Hoax?
Absolutely not. It crashed mine and is a major bug. It doesn't seem to affect the PPro, though, and not the P2 due to its relation to the PPro. It might be fixed in later Pentiums, which begs the question of why Intel didn't issue a recall back then. Supposidly they were informed about it months ago. Read comp.sys.intel.