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From: ekalenda@cup.portal.com (Edward John Kalenda)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Wild claims about copy protection--true?
Message-ID: <35131@cup.portal.com>
Date: 22 Oct 90 03:14:56 GMT
References: <5946@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 23

S. "Stevie" Smith writes:
> I had a conversation/argument with a guy last night who claimed he
> had fried a monitor and several hard disks when he was trying to
> bypass the copy protection on floppy disks at various times.
then asks if software can destroy hardware.

Yes, some monitors CAN be ruined by misprogramming the Video Control chip
on the video adaptor. All the technical references on the 6845 that I
have indicate that the control registers MUST be setup properly in as
little time as possible or you risk overloading the beam control circuitry
in the monitor. I've spoken with monitor designers about this now and then
and they say it can happen, not all monitors are suceptible but the cheaper
they are the less overload protection they have designed into them.

The main consideration seems to be the sync timing. Get it off too far and
the deflection circuits saturate, leading to possible overload of the
high voltage transformer.

I'm not an analog engineer so this is second hand from guys who are. The
gist is there, but the details may be a bit off.

Ed
ekalenda@cup.portal.com