Debugging techniques and core dumps (was Re: ebay - cardamatic)

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Jennings <tomj at wps.com> writes:

 Tom> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Eric Smith wrote:
 >> When I get a core dump, if it's not immediately obvious what was
 >> wrong, I load it into the debugger (gdb) to investigate it.  For
 >> gdb, the core dump filename is an optional command line parameter
 >> after the executable file.

 Tom> Oh! gdb dumps! I was thinking more about line printer hex
 Tom> (octal) dumps. Manual stack traces and all that sort of rot. I
 Tom> knew people who could do that. 

Oh sure, I still do that from time to time.  (Cyber retrocomputing...)

Cybers are particularly entertaining.  If you get your peripheral
processor stuck, all you get is a dump of memory.  You don't get the
accumulator; you do NOT get the program counter.  Oh yes, the hardware
puts a zero in memory where the program counter was, so if you can
figure out which of the various zeroes doesn't belong, then you're in
luck.

Fortunately I now have an emulator, so I can see a lot more than in
the old days.

    paul