killer poke

In computer jargon, a killer poke is a method of inducing hardware damage (i.e., actual physical, irreversible damage) on a machine and/or its peripherals by the insertion of invalid values, via e.g. the BASIC-command poke, into a memory-mapped control register. The term is used especially of various fairly well-known tricks that can overload the analog electronics in the CRT monitors of bitty boxes lacking hardware memory management (such as the IBM PC and Commodore PET). A similar trick is reported having been done to Atari ST displays. See also: HCF (Halt and Catch Fire)

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