Reading or Modifying Hardware Capabilities Information

Alfred Huang, January 13, 2006

Ever experienced the following case before? You created an app targeted for certain "newer" platforms, then one day came across an "older" machine and incautiously tried to run your app on it. What happened? When a new instruction of the newer machine was executed on an older one, the older one did not recognize it and simply ended with a rude message from the OS, "Invalid Instruction". At this stage, it may take some effort to figure out the culprit.