Mythbusters

It's not a killer POKE, but... In the mid-80s, my roommate owned an Apple IIe. He lived in an out-of-the-way apartment complex in Austin, TX, right underneath the complex's power transformer block. Well, he was typing on the Apple IIe, and a neighbor decided to leave the complex. C-A-T-A-L-O-G-- At the same instant that the roommate hit ENTER, the car managed to back into the power transformer. There was a loud explosion outside, and inside a smaller one was accompanied by (as he described it) "the floppy drive flying right by my head and into the wall"! The accompanying surge blew out every electronic device in the complex that was directly attached to an outlet. Ironically enough, the Apple IIe (sans unfortunate disk drive) survived. It had a Kensington System Saver installed... According to the roommate, the System Saver saved itself... The spike was shunted to the power supply, which shunted it to the motherboard, which shunted it to the disk drive. Having nowhere to shunt the spike, the disk drive saved the computer by commiting suicide. The last part I had no faith in, until uncovering his Apple IIe in a store-room a few years ago. There was the system saver, the IIe, and two disk drives... The first ("Drive 2") was perfectly functional, if dirty... The second ("Drive 1") didn't work. On disassembly, a large scorched hole winked out from a place on the analog board that once housed a major IC. After swapping the analog board I still use his old drive, and his old IIe with system saver, to this day. Does that fit the description of "and sparks type of software failure ending in an explosion"? Granted, it was an organic software failure... My $0.02, Josef -- "I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke." -- Hilda "Sharpie" Burroughs, "The Number of the Beast" by Robert A. Heinlein