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From: scot@amigash.UUCP (Scot L. Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Blowing up your 1950
Message-ID: <scot.5054@amigash.UUCP>
Date: 1 Dec 90 01:40:20 GMT
References: <964.2754A82B@weyr.FIDONET.ORG>
Lines: 29

>In article <964.2754A82B@weyr.FIDONET.ORG> David.Plummer@f70.n140.z1.FIDONET.ORG (David Plummer) writes:
>Personally, I think viruses blowing up your monitor sounds a little
>extreme, but the ability to cause damage to CTRs via software isn't new

>Point being, nothing can instantly destroy your monitor.  Even if you
>could damage it, I don't think anything could be so severe as to do
>damage before you could turn it off.

>David Plummer - via FidoNet node 1:140/22

I used to belive this also until one of the engineers at a place I used to work
for came in and said he blew up his monitor with a program.  I did not
belive him even after he explained what happened.  Later on I got confirmation
that this could indeed happen.  He had an IBM and a hercules graphics card
that he was poking registers at.  Seems that you can poke some values in that
card (possibly others) that cause it to put out I belive a much higher 
frequency signal to the monitor than the monitor can handle.  A few seconds
of that and he had smoke curlying out the top of the monitor and the monitor
was dead.  

I would suspect that the new graphics modes and monitors get into these
frequency ranges and if you have the wrong monitor attached the possibility
of it going poof is fairly high.

--
          _                                                                
    ///  /_\      Scot L. Harris ...!tarpit!bilver!amigash!scot 
  \XX/  /   \ M I G A                 Orlando, FL (407)273-1759 
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