Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!dxb132
From: DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Blowing up your 1950
Message-ID: <90336.141018DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 2 Dec 90 19:10:18 GMT
References: <964.2754A82B@weyr.FIDONET.ORG> <36456@cup.portal.com>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 28

In article <36456@cup.portal.com>, thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) says:

>On the early IBM-PCs (and maybe still for all I know about "those" systems),
>it was possible to change video attributes by altering the values written to

Yes, on anything that used a 6845 (very common), this was possible. But if it
destroys a monitor, the monitor was not designed properly. I've written all
sorts of random garbage to a Hercules card (6845 based) and it never hurt
my monitor (but of course I rebooted right away :-) :-))

>On the Amiga, we see numerous instances in this newsgroup about the battery-
>backed clock getting clobbered by errant programs ... the clock's registers
>are sitting in the address space easily touchable by any program.

This is one of my pet peeves. It SEEMS like every crash messes up the clock.
I'm lucky if my clock is still set properly at the end of a busy day.

>And guess what ALSO is vulnerable to errant programs:  your SCSI interface.

This I'm not too concerned with, as it's hard for a program writing random
garbage to get the common command set just right. :-)

>Protection not only from "normal" programming bugs during development, but
>from virii such as the LAME-BRAINER or whatever?

Problem is, viruses don't do much that legitimate programs don't also do.

-- Dan Babcock