What does the unimplemented trap bomb error message mean?

[Ethan Dicks]

On 2/7/07, Hex Star <hexstar at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/07, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 2/6/07, Hex Star <hexstar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > well what's a software trap? something that traps data?
> >
> > Nope.  Something that traps program execution.  If you dig into the
> > Motorola documentation for the 68000 processor, there's a number of
> > pages (a whole chapter?) dedicated to how the trap architecture works....
>
> ah wow...sounds like the detailed descriptions would be interesting to read
> (and the processor is alot more complex then one would think)...

The 68000 is a lot more like a PDP-11 minicomputer than it is like
microprocessors of the late 1970s (I have some preliminary spec sheets
somewhere with a date around 1979).  As such, it's is loaded with
features (and mis-features ;-) and is complex enough to be useful as
an embedded processor (laser printers, intellegent serial cards,
routers...), as a single-user computer (Amiga, Atari ST, etc.) and all
the way up to multi-user box (Perkin-Elmer workstation, Amiga running
Minix, etc.)  If you include the 68010, which is 95%+ the same as a
68000 (pin compatible, nearly entirely instruction-set compatible, but
with some trap improvements ;-) you'll find it in several multi-user
contexts (AT&T 3B1, Sun 1, other UNIX workstation-class machines).

It's one of my favorite microprocessors.

> where can I
> find the documentation on the 68000 processor? thanks! :-)

Hmm... I happen to have a 3rd edition "68000 User's Manual" published
by Motorola in the early 1980s.  I always had it handy when I was
banging out Comboard code or Amiga code.  If you need it on paper, it
might take a bit of asking around or digging on used book sale sites.
I happened to run across these links after a quick Google...

http://tict.ticalc.org/docs/68kUM.pdf
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/ref_manual/EC000UM.pdf
http://www.freescale.com/files/archives/doc/ref_manual/M68000PRM.pdf
http://www.freescale.com/files/archives/doc/ref_manual/M68000PRMER.txt
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/ref_manual/M68000UMAD.pdf
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/ref_manual/MC68000UM.pdf
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/ref_manual/MC68000UMAD.pdf

UM == User's Manual
PRM == Programmer's Reference Manual
AD == addendum

Enjoy,

-ethan