Minecraft wiki entry for Redstone_computers, associated text: The fifth bus is another control bus, linking with the ALU, which sends flags from the ALU. Flags are notes which could be error messages. For example, the CU could ask the ALU to add 15 and 1 in a 4-bit system. Adding 15 and 1 in 4 bits would yield 0 (explained above) and this is called a binary overflow. This is an error and the ALU will tell the CU about this through the fifth bus as a flag. The CPU could also send data to the ALU and ask for it to perform an action with that data.