Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!ucdavis!csusac!csuchico.edu!tjohnson
From: tjohnson@ecst.csuchico.edu (Thomas G. Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Wild claims about copy protection--true?
Message-ID: <1990Oct28.023321.12232@ecst.csuchico.edu>
Date: 28 Oct 90 02:33:21 GMT
References: <5946@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu> <8951@pitt.UUCP>
Sender: news@ecst.csuchico.edu (USENET)
Distribution: na
Organization: California State University, Chico
Lines: 21

>In article <5946@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu> smsmith@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Steve 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.
>According to him, software companies PURPOSEFULLY WRITE code into
>their copy protection which, if tampered with, would make your hard
>drive attempt to read non-existent sectors or send abnormal frequencies
>to your monitor in order to fry/lock them up. .....

I'm not an expert, but I know enough about electronics and TV/monitor theory
to know that the worst thing that will happen to a monitor if you send it
the wrong frequency is that it will not lock on the picture.  The sync
circuits are oscillators that have their frequency controlled by receiving 
sync signals from the computer.  If the signal is not within the frequency 
range of the oscillator, the oscillator will run free, and the picture will
be garbage, but no damage to the circuits will occur.

 ____   _____   ____
|    | |  _  | |    |  tjohnson, a.k.a. Thomas G. Johnson
|    | | | |_| |    |                      CSU, Chico
|____| |_|     |____|