Since combining hardware blocks and software modules continues to be the implementation style of choice for products like cell phones and multimedia devices, it is important there is consistent operational interaction between the two. Due to ambiguities in operational descriptions, obscure bugs are often produced that can only be found using extensive verification methods, and the only methods available to accomplish the required level of verification are prototyping the design or using an emulation system. The use of emulation to verify the level of device complexity is becoming critical. To illustrate this point, an operating system was booted up on a simple processor platform using an EVE ZeBu-UF 0.5 emulator. Partway through the process of booting up Linux, an error message occurred resulting in a kern panic. The error and resulting resolution (which was due to a misinterpretation of the English language in the universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART)s specifications) highlighted several things. First, errors usually manifest themselves on the software side. Second, in an emulation environment, a hardware trigger can be set that will halt the entire system, which is helpful in finding bugs. Third, the emulator graphical user interface has the ability to use Tool Command Language (TCL) to add functionality for a specific operation. This ability to add specialized profiling, debug and analysis operations is useful with a complex system where there is a great opportunity for misinterpretation of fundamental operational understanding.