Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: samw@castle.ed.ac.uk (Sam Wilson) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Re: Destructive virus... Message-ID: <0004.8908291156.AA25879@ge.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 25 Aug 89 09:03:25 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 22 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu In article <0002.8908241743.AA12387@ge.sei.cmu.edu> dmg@mwunix.mitre.org (David Gursky) writes: >Does anyone on the list have some information about an alleged virus that >caused monitors on either older PCs, Ataris, or Amigas (I forgot which plat- >form was susceptible) to self-destruct? I don't know of any virus which does this but a couple of years ago I recall being told about a screen saver for the PC which assumed you were using an {IBM|Hercules} controller. It worked by directly writing to the registers of the controller chip. When you used it with a {Hercules|IBM} card the the controller was different and the values poked into the registers caused the controller to run at some strange scan rate which occasionally caused the monitor and/or the driver hardware on the controller card to burst into flames. Sam Wilson Edinburgh University Computing Service, Scotland - ---------- "What we really need .... .. is a piece of software that actually makes a computer blow up just like in the movies...."