full-disclosure - DOS all platforms

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From: rslade at sprint.ca (Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah)
Subject: DOS all platforms

Ah, dear, dear, dear.  The old legends never really die ...

> Exibar wrote:
> 
> >   Causing Physical damage to equipment????  Good luck....  although way
> back
> > when there was a program that would set the refresh rate on your monitor
> > very very high and it could cause the monitor to die....  Doesn't happen
> > anymore though :-)

Good luck about covers it.  The monitor business was not the refresh rate, but the 
scanning rate.  On one particular graphics card (one of the Hercules line, if my 
failing memory serves) /monitor combo you could set the rate to zero in both 
directions, thus allowing you to burn out the phosphors in one particular spot.  It 
would take some considerable time to seriously damage a large chuck of screen real 
estate.  Never was included in any malware that I encountered ...

From:           	"Brent Colflesh" <Brent.Colflesh@...icom.com>
Date sent:      	Fri, 23 Jan 2004 18:00:09 -0500

> I also recall rumours of a virus in the ~1995 time frame which would
> cause overexcursion of the r/w heads in the hard drive, causing the
> heads to crash into the side of the drive.

Again, never used in any malware.  This was widely used as an example of an 
action that *could* cause hardware damage.  In fact, it was hardly universal.  Some 
old 5.25" drives would lose alignment if the heads were repeatedly banged against 
the stop.  On the other hand, on some drives it was the standard way to get the 
drive to allow you to access and format tracks outside the normal range, so that 
you could cram more data onto a disk ...

====================== 
rslade@....bc.ca      slade@...toria.tc.ca      rslade@....soci.niu.edu
"If you do buy a computer, don't turn it on."     - Richards' 2nd Law
"Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses"              0-387-94663-2
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