Is memory in eCos initialized to these values before it's used? When I didn't initialize this variable, it ended up being set to this value which happened to be in memory at that location. (gdb) print slot->attr $1 = (unsigned char *) 0xdeadbeef "_\004 Bâ\004 Bä\001 Dä\001 Då\t" Is this some sort of joke, or just a !TOTALLY random occurance? Trenton D. Adams Extreme Engineering #17, 6025 - 12 St. SE Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2H 2K1 Phone: 403 640 9494 ext-208 Fax: 403 640 9599 http://www.extremeeng.com