Spectre GCR Manual Manuals - Atari Documentation Archive

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Other Registers
Here's what the rest of the stuff on the page is:
Appendix G: Crashing
The PC is the program counter; it's 2-10 bytes past where the fatal
error occurred. The IR is the Instruction Register; generally, it matches
the opcode that caused the fatality. The AT is the Access Type; that's
not real useful, generally it's an encoded form of the IR. The SR is the
Status Register; it should be 21xx to 27xx, to ensure supervisor mode,
and IPL whatever. Then, the data and address registers, 00-07 and
AO-A7, are dumped.
Usually, with a zerostore, you see an address register at 0; any
other bus errors usually have a bus cycle pointing off to Mars
somewhere. Usually, with an address error, a register is pointing to
the same place that Bus Cycle reported.
With a little disassembly at this point, you can trace down the
offending pointer, and possibly fix the program - providing you're
developing it. If you're a user, and it's a minor feature that causes the
crash, fine, don't do that anymore; if it's a major feature, get the
manufacturer to fix it, or use the competition.
I am always anxious to see programs that crash to see if I can
improve my error handler. Feel free to send disks to the Gadgets
Address. It's even, so you don't get an address error.
EDITOR: Moan.
Okay, okay, it wasn't that good. Also, remember that online there
are numerous reports of what programs and what programs fizzle,
and why - as well as potential fixes.
Mega 2 Problems
A few Mega 2s have a problem driving the Mac 128K Roms
because of "insufficient muscle power" ; those Mega 2's have too much
capacitance for some of the chips on the motherboard. The symptoms
include random crashes, even while in ST mode, funny disk problems,
and other weird happenings like those previously mentioned. Note
that these symptoms occur even when the Spectre program is not running.
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