I am receiving a trap, interrupt or exception message and don't know
          what it means.

          Traps, interrupts and exceptions are basically the same thing and are
          handled the same by the CPU.  Below are some quick definitions:

          Traps:

              Exceptions that are reported immediately after the execution of
              the instruction which caused the problem. User defined interrupts
              are examples of traps.

          Interrupts:

              Used to handle external asynchronous events (i.e., signals that
              come from the bus are interrupts 33-255 in decimal or 0x21-0xFF
              in hex).  The message "Trap 0xFF", which translates into "Trap
              255", indicates bad hardware; only a piece of hardware on the bus
              can generate that number.

          Exceptions:

              Used to handle instruction faults.

          Interrupts 19-32 decimal or 0x13-0x20 in hex are INTEL RESERVED.

          Key for the type column below:

              NMI = Non maskable interrupts.  These provide a method of
                    servicing very high priority interrupts.  They are
                    generated by hardware.

              Fault = Exceptions that are detected and serviced before the
                      execution of the faulting instruction (i.e., page faults).

              Abort = Exceptions which do not permit the precise location of
                      the instruction causing the exception to be determined.
                      These are used to report severe errors such as a hardware
                      error or illegal values in system tables.

          Below is a table that shows a list of interrupts, what type it is,
          and a description of what could cause that interrupt.

          

      depending upon context, the number of an exception may appear
          in decimal instead of hex; the exception type may appear as "trap",
          "fault", or "exception", regardless of how the types are specified
          below.  For instance, a page fault (0x0E) occurring in kernel mode
          is likely to cause a panic, some of whose printed output may appear
          on the console screen as "TRAPNO=14" or something similar to this.

              Int  Type      Cause
              ___  ____      _____________

              0x00 Fault     Divide error.

              0x01 Trap      Not used in XENIX or UNIX.

              0x02 NMI       NMI interrupt.

              0x03 Trap      Not used in XENIX or UNIX.

              0x04 Trap      Interrupt on overflow.

              0x05 Fault     Array bounds check.

              0x06 Fault     Invalid op code.  Can be caused by any illegal
                             instruction, caching, bad hardware, bad
                             instruction from memory or bad memory itself.

              0x07 Fault     Device not available (i.e., co-processor trap for
                             one that does not exist).

              0x08 Abort     Double fault.  Causes the classic double panic.
                             The kernel paniced while it was panicing.  This is
                             caused by any illegal instruction from a third
                             party software package or from bad RAM.

              0x09 Abort     Co-processor segment overrun.

              0x0A Fault     Invalid task state, corresponds to how the 386
                             does 8086 emulation. SCO VP/ix related problems or
                             bad hardware.

              0x0B Fault     Segment not present. Addressing problem. Suspect
                             bad memory or 3rd party device driver conflict.

              0x0C Fault     Stack fault. Only occurs in kernel mode.  Fixed
                             size stack is being overflowed. For example, a bad
                             internal modem could be flooding the stack.

              0x0D Fault     General protection trap.  Caused by any memory
                             reference or invalid address.  Could also be a
                             parity error from bad RAM

              0x0E Fault     Page fault, addressing problem because the kernel
                             tried to reference a page that it couldn't bring
                             in to memory.  Could be a memory problem (bad RAM)
                             or a 3rd party device driver bug.

              0x0F           Not Used in XENIX or UNIX.

              0x10 Fault     Coprocessor Error, hardware problem.

              0x11 Fault     Alignment Check. Caused by memory reference to
                             data at unaligned data address.  Could be a 3rd
                             party device driver bug.

              0x12           Machine Check (Pentium only), model dependent.

          Technical Article 111621, "What caused my computer to panic with trap type
          0x0000000E?"