29 Nov
2007
29 Nov
'07
7:55 a.m.
From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com>
In article <474E0308.2010901 at atarimuseum.com>,
"Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com> writes:
There was an urban myth back in the late 80's and
early 90's that there
was a virus going around that could alter the scan rate of a video
adapter so that it would blow out the monitor. Never saw any such
damage to a monitor in person, so I don't know if it was just a myth or
actually existed.
Its not an urban legend. The issue was that there was a sync register
(horizontal sync, I think) for which you could poke in a zero value.
Wasn't the issue with a MONO monitor rather than CGA? ISTR that the horizontal
frequency would get altered overheating the flyback with the resultant loss of
the magic smoke.