Writing a Bootloader
3zanders.co.uk
Writing a Bootloader
1–10 of 55 posts
Re: Writing a Bootloader
#2> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code
Is that actually possible?
Re: Writing a Bootloader
#3> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code Is that actually possible?
I'd say yes. Especially if you mess with ACPI and, say, turn off the fans...
Re: Writing a Bootloader
#4> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code Is that actually possible?
The only times I've heard of destroying hardware with software have been:
1) stopping the ray in a CRT monitor through special purpose registers and using it to burn through the phosphorous.
2) Early floppy drives where you could position the head to an impossible position causing the servo to burn.
Haven't heard of anything like what he is describing the last 20 years. Perhaps you can overheat some stuff - but most likley it'll shut down before anything bad happends. There are however some worrying notes on OSDEV about causing potential damage when probing for memory, perhaps the author read this and got worries. It isn't detailed or likely, imho.
Re: Writing a Bootloader
#5> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code Is that actually possible?
I'd say yes. Especially if you mess with ACPI and, say, turn off the fans...
Modern processors just thermal throttle to the extreme if the heat can’t be dissipated, no?
Re: Writing a Bootloader
#6Re: Writing a Bootloader
#7> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code Is that actually possible?
Yep.
Back in the early days of GNU/Linux, getting X to run could kill your monitor.
Another example, many hard drive controllers used to blindly move their heads to whatever position they were told, even if it was an incorrect position. In the old days you also had to use something like PC Tools to park the heads before moving the computer.
Re: Writing a Bootloader
#8> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code Is that actually possible?
The only times I've heard of destroying hardware with software have been: 1) stopping the ray in a CRT monitor through special purpose registers and using it to burn through the phosphorous. 2) Early floppy drives where you could position the head to an impossible position causing the servo to burn. Haven't heard of anything like what he is describing the last 20 years. Perhaps you can overheat some stuff - but most…
On computers where `efivars' is mounted read-write, you can possibly brick your UEFI by deleting the contents of that “file system” https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402
Re: Writing a Bootloader
#9> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code Is that actually possible?
The only times I've heard of destroying hardware with software have been: 1) stopping the ray in a CRT monitor through special purpose registers and using it to burn through the phosphorous. 2) Early floppy drives where you could position the head to an impossible position causing the servo to burn. Haven't heard of anything like what he is describing the last 20 years. Perhaps you can overheat some stuff - but most…
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Re: Writing a Bootloader
#10> QEMU is great because you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying your hardware with badly written OS code Is that actually possible?
As recently as 4 years ago there were Samsung laptops that could be bricked by installing Linux. Apparently there was a special physical memory address that you weren't supposed to poke and which Linux did, which resulted in bricking the laptop.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/booti...