[TAG] cdrom problem

[Ben Okopnik]

On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 06:51:40PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 03:36:35PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> > Quoting Jason Creighton (androflux at softhome.net):
> > > Really, the only hardware I can think of that might be damaged by
> > > software would be some old fixed-frequency (right term?) monitors. What
> > > else was there?
> > 
> > Recently, there were some really bad "LG" (formerly Goldstar) CD-ROM
> > drives, but that episode was really a fluke.
> > 
> > (Occasionally, one hears rumours about software that somehow pokes
> > EEPROM chips so as to erase or overwrite them, but I can't cite details.)
> 
> And, as I noted, there was the famous Halt and Catch Fire instruction.
> 
> >From the Jargon file:
> 
>       ===
>      Mnemonic for 'Halt and Catch Fire', any of several undocumented
>      and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive
>      side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several
>      well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The
>      MC6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became
>      widely known. This instruction caused the processor to toggle a
>      subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in some
>      configurations this could actually cause lines to burn up. Compare
>      killer poke.

Ah-ha! Cool, it's been immortalized. :)


* Ben Okopnik * okopnik.freeshell.org * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette *
-*- See the Linux Gazette in its new home: <http://linuxgazette.net> -*-