In the early 90s, Linux actually let you set hsync on your monitors, not just vsync. With a CRT you could literally fry it with an invalid number. Generally I wasn’t as cautious because I knew I could never really brick a computer, except for that setting.
It warned you about that, but I don’t think actually frying a monitor was common. I was cautious, but I still made mistakes and gave it values that my monitor couldn’t handle, but the worst that happened was a dangerous sound coming out of the monitor and no useful picture on the screen. I immediately shut off my monitor when that happened, but it didn’t do any permanent damage.
Probably a cheaply made monitor might have issues, but well built monitors had hardware protection against invalid settings.
Many of the older monitors could let the smoke out if you gave it the wrong horizontal frequency. The better made monitors would limit the horizontal frequency to a safe value and just not sync if the video signal was outside that range. The later monitors were smart enough to not even try to display and invalid signal and may even show an error message on screen.
Generally no. Most of those variables are mounted RO now. Additionally you can factory reset the board and recover. There were some systems a while ago when UEFI first came out that didn’t correctly manage that, but that hasn’t been a problem for years now.
In the 90’s: “Sorry you set the CPU voltage jumpers wrong and you’ve fried it. No refunds.”
In the early 90s, Linux actually let you set hsync on your monitors, not just vsync. With a CRT you could literally fry it with an invalid number. Generally I wasn’t as cautious because I knew I could never really brick a computer, except for that setting.
It warned you about that, but I don’t think actually frying a monitor was common. I was cautious, but I still made mistakes and gave it values that my monitor couldn’t handle, but the worst that happened was a dangerous sound coming out of the monitor and no useful picture on the screen. I immediately shut off my monitor when that happened, but it didn’t do any permanent damage.
Probably a cheaply made monitor might have issues, but well built monitors had hardware protection against invalid settings.
Many of the older monitors could let the smoke out if you gave it the wrong horizontal frequency. The better made monitors would limit the horizontal frequency to a safe value and just not sync if the video signal was outside that range. The later monitors were smart enough to not even try to display and invalid signal and may even show an error message on screen.
Uhm… Won’t
sudo rm -rf /*also brick your modern PC, as it also deletes UEFI variables that are always mounted rw for technical reasons?Generally no. Most of those variables are mounted RO now. Additionally you can factory reset the board and recover. There were some systems a while ago when UEFI first came out that didn’t correctly manage that, but that hasn’t been a problem for years now.
I’m in this comment and I hate it.
I once somehow managed to plug in a molex upside down and got to watch the magic smoke escape from a 2GB Bigfoot drive. Sad day.