View source for Bomb (icon)

{{short description|Symbolic image used to represent a bomb}}

[[File:MacOs Syserror.png|thumb|300px|Mac OS system error alert from the System 7 era. These were a common sight, and Mac users of the era often kept a paper clip nearby in order to restart the computer since the onscreen restart button would usually be nonfunctional.]]
The '''bomb''' [[Icon (computing)|icon]] (💣) has several different applications in [[Computing|computing]], and typically indicates a [[Fatal system error|fatal system error]].

== In computing ==

===Mac OS===
The bomb icon in Mac OS is a [[Symbol|symbol]] designed by [[Biography:Susan Kare|Susan Kare]] that was displayed inside the System Error [[Dialog box|alert box]] when the [[Software:Classic Mac OS|"classic" Macintosh operating system]] had a [[Crash (computing)|crash]] which the system decided was unrecoverable. Since the [[Software:Classic Mac OS|classic Mac OS]] offered little [[Memory protection|memory protection]], an application crash would often take down the entire system.

The bomb symbol first appeared on the original Macintosh in 1984. Often, a reason for the crash, including the error code, was displayed in the dialog. In some cases, a "Resume" button would be available, allowing the user to dismiss the dialog and force the offending program to quit, but most often the resume button would be disabled and the computer would have to be restarted. Originally, the resume button was unavailable unless the running program had provided the OS with code to allow recovery. With the advent of System 7, if the OS thought it could handle recovery, a normal error dialog box was displayed, and the application was forced to quit. This was helped by the classic Mac OS providing a little bit of protection against [[Dynamic memory allocation|heap]] corruption using guard pages; if the application was to crash and the application's heap was corrupt, it could be thrown away.

The [[Debugger|debugger]] program [[Software:MacsBug|MacsBug]] was sometimes used even by end users to provide basic (though not always reliable) error recovery, and could be used for troubleshooting purposes, much as the output of a [[Software:Unix|Unix]] [[Software:Kernel panic|kernel panic]] or a [[Software:Windows NT|Windows NT]] [[Blue Screen of Death]] could be. Mac OS Classic bomb boxes were often ridiculed for providing little or no useful information about the error; this was a conscious decision by the Macintosh team to eliminate any information that the end user could not make sense of. The error code was intended to be included in a bug report to the developer.

In [[Software:Mac OS X|Mac OS X]], the system architecture is vastly different from that in the [[Software:Classic Mac OS|classic Mac OS]], and an application crash cannot usually bring down the entire system. A [[Software:Kernel panic|kernel panic]] screen (either text overwritten on the screen in older versions, or simplified to a reboot message in more recent versions) replaces the bomb symbol but appears less often due to the radically different system architecture. The bomb symbol is not used in Mac OS X, but a test application called ''Bomb.app'', specifically written to cause a non-fatal crash, is included with [[Software:Xcode|Xcode]] and uses a rendition of the bomb symbol as its icon.

In the original Mac OS, the [[System call|system call]] to display a "bomb box" was called DSError, for "Deep Shit".<ref>{{cite tweet
|number=426969769762230272
|user=cdespinosa
|author=Chris Espinosa
|title=Mac 128K Fun Fact!  The 'bomb box' was invoked by the A-trap DSError in the System Error Manager. During development, DS stood for 'deep shi
|access-date=2021-08-17}}</ref>  This was deemed obscene, and became the "System Error Manager".<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Busy_Being_Born,_Part_2.txt
|title=Busy Being Born, Part 2
|work=The Original Macintosh
|publisher=Folklore.org
|author=Andy Hertzfeld
|quote=...the bomb icon is "Deep". That's the first word of the original name of the code ... an obscene name, with the API calls prefixed with "DS" ... eventually settling on the more prosaic "System Error" manager.
|accessdate=2008-02-05}}</ref>

===Atari ST TOS===
[[Image:Row of bombs.png|right|frame|On the Atari ST, the four bombs indicate that the system error "Illegal Instruction" has occurred.]]
[[Software:Atari TOS|TOS]]-based systems, such as the [[Engineering:Atari ST|Atari ST]], used a '''row of bombs''' to indicate a critical system error. The number of bombs displayed revealed information about the occurred error. The error (also called an ''[[Exception handling|exception]]'') is reported by the [[Engineering:Motorola 68000|Motorola 68000]] [[Engineering:Microprocessor|microprocessor]]. The first version of TOS used [[Physics:Mushroom cloud|mushroom cloud]]s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n9/toserrors.html|title=The New TOS ROM Error Codes|website=www.atarimagazines.com}}</ref>

* 1 bomb: Reset, Initial PC2
* 2 bombs: Bus Error
* 3 bombs: Address Error
* 4 bombs: Illegal Instruction
* 5 bombs: [[Division by zero]]
* 6 bombs: CHK Instruction
* 7 bombs: TRAPV Instruction
* 8 bombs: Privilege Violation
* 9 bombs: Trace
* 10 bombs: Line 1010 Emulator
* 11 bombs: Line 1111 Emulator
* 12–13 bombs: Reserved
* 14 bombs: Format Error
* 15 bombs: Uninitialized Interrupt Vector
* 16–23 bombs: Reserved
* 24 bombs: Spurious Interrupt
* 25 bombs: Level 1 Interrupt Autovector
* 26 bombs: Level 2 Interrupt Autovector
* 27 bombs: Level 3 Interrupt Autovector
* 28 bombs: Level 4 Interrupt Autovector
* 29 bombs: Level 5 Interrupt Autovector
* 30 bombs: Level 6 Interrupt Autovector
* 31 bombs: Level 7 Interrupt Autovector
* 32–47 bombs: Trap Instruction Vectors
* 48–63 bombs: Reserved
* 64–255 bombs: User Interrupt Vectors<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/13/0222.php|title=Help-Line (Q & A): Re: TOS ERROR 39?|last=(ah292@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)|first=Robert Krynak|website=www.atariarchives.org|access-date=2017-09-01}}</ref>

=== Unicode ===
Bomb emoji was added to  [[Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs]] character block in Unicode version 6.0 with code point {{Unichar|1F4A3|BOMB}}.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs Range: 1F300–1F5FF The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0|url=https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-6.0/U60-1F300.pdf|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101125044739/http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-6.0/U60-1F300.pdf |archive-date=2010-11-25 }}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Grenade (insignia)]]
*[[Screen of death]]
== References ==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20080706173103/http://developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/OSUtilities/OSUtilities-29.html About the System Error Handler]

{{error messages}}

[[Category:Computer errors]]

{{Sourceattribution|Bomb (icon)}}