Date   : Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:07:12 +0100
From   : bbcmicro@... (Ian Stocks)
Subject: Free Stuff Tranche III [Results]

Rick Murray wrote:
> On 09/08/2010 19:25, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
> 
>> Someone in the class at my tech college (many moons ago) discovered that
>> POKeing a certain location on the Commode Pet caused it to go up in
>> smoke.  Once that got around, that was the end of them.
> 
> Mmm, I wonder what that was? You can upset a Beeb (slightly) by putting 
> *Motor On and *Motor Off in a loop. You can upset a monitor (sometimes 
> terminally) by messing with the video chip. You might be able to kill a 
> floppy drive (like *Motor, seek to track 80 and back in a loop), but can 
> you kill a Beeb from software alone? Or was the PET just a bit naff? :-)

It one of those stories that has been around for years, and always 
seemed to be an urban legend to me, eveyone knew someone who had done it.

Check out the following link for a possible explanation:-
http://www.6502.org/users/andre/petindex/poke/index.html

Ian.