MachinePeek (immediate op &8)

Available in: BBC MOS, RISC OS.

MachinePeek is a special frame which can be sent to a station on an Econet network to request that it identify its hardware platform/configuration. BBC machines had to respond to machine peek, but some versions of the RISC OS Econet implementation can refuse to reply.

Alan Williams wrote a cool app called Machines which would query the Econet and bridges from an Archimedes station, showing each machine connected to the network with an appropriate icon along with its station number. I preferred my own Ecommand effort, but only because I drew the map of my network myself:

For more Econet exploits, see KaServer.