IBM RS/6000 systems have a three-digit
LED display on the front for diagnostic purposes. An
AIX priest will have
RTFM, will be familiar with many codes that can appear there, and can tell you exactly what the machine is doing as it boots up.
IBM makes some parallel-computing supercomputer clusters, called the SP/2, made up of several RS/6000 systems. The control console comes with an XWindows application that displays the LEDs of the individual nodes!
The point of the story is, when an RS/6000 thoroughly wedges itself, the display flashes "888" as a sign that something is severely fucked, and more diagnostic codes are available for retrieval. Thus amongst AIX sysadmins, 888 has reclaimed its association with the dark and sinister.