OSDev.org

jal is quite right. It has been some time since I last saw the gibberish resulting from bogus timing signals. Both CRTs and TFTs today display a "Sync out of Range" and wait until the video signal stabilizes again.

It is possible to fry your hardware through software, but it is hard to do so. If you were to do random port i/o or memory writes, it might happen. More likely is that your system will become unstable and, eventually, reboot.

If you are doing OS development, i.e. you halfways know what you're doing, the chance to fry your system - especially when using emulators before "going hardware" - are very minimal. (As in, pouring your cup of coffee into the computer and frying it that way is probably more likely.)

When I was doing net admin, I had a colleague who threatened to wire cat 5 cable up with a 240v plug at one end and an RJ45 connector at the other as a way of permanently disconnecting one of our more annoying users remotely from the hub room.

We managed to dissuade him - otherwise you may have heard about it on the national news

Combuster wrote:I've been doing VGA programming for about 7 years now, and I never managed to break a monitor in all that time :wink:

Loser! You haven't tried hard enough! :))) No, seriously, it is not that easy, and it does take some early, unprotected monitor. Although I haven't really tried myself either. Come to think of it, I could've tried it with these old monitors that I gave away to be bashed with a baseball bat... (no, that's not me) :)


JAL

Well, hockey97, good luck, you'll need it.

And welcome to the forum.

-JL

thanks. Well I asked about this becuse I seen alot of warnings in c++ books and in some OS books and embedded system books where they warn that they are not responsible for any damaged hardware do examples at your own risk.

I am new to OS dev done some c++ programs and I also created a webpages in php and html javascript ect.

I now hunger more stuff, lol I thought it would be a fun experience to make my own OS. So I am no pro at OS nore have any experience.
but I plan to make a small computer well embedded system I have experience in eletronics and I had classes in eletronic engineering some classes so I aint no engineer. So I am just going to play around making my own embedded system and my own OS by taking baby steps so I could learn along the way . I right now just plan to get a basic os up and running with me having to install it or somthing just want it emulated so I can say that I understood the basics, The I will build on from their.

Thanks for the discussion it was very interesting.