Re: Modern hw-killing virus feasible

[Vortex <vortex () CAFFEINE ORG UK>]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2001 18:56:32 -0800, you wrote:
> The old Commodore 1541 drives only had about 30-odd tracks, but
> the command for what track to send to took a full byte.  It
> was trivial to write a short program to send the head to track 255.
> This required opening the drive case and pulling the head
> back into the normal area.  Of course, these drives could also
> be programmed to play music by vibrating a different pitches....
> I used to have a program that would play "East Side, West Side"
> on the drive.
<snip>
> But, in short, my opinion is that software can cause permanent
> (have to replace atoms to fix) damage, under the exact
> right circumstances.
<snip>

Along the lines of read heads and music, Sony Minidisc players (and I
assume other modern audio devices) can be put into an engineering mode
where the heads can be realigned - it's possible to make the unit
unable to read any MD discs (except ones recorded on that device??),
and I believe, cause permanent damage to the unit.

-- 
vortex at caffeine dot org dot uk :: http://www2.caffeine.org.uk/~vortex/